by Joshua Klein
"Serious" admonished Cessus. "Cass charged me an arm and a leg to wire this thing up."
"How likely is it to come out?" asked Fed, twisting his eyes back to try and see the long black lock where it draped from the side of his head.
"Unless you suddenly go bald you'll be okay" said Cessus. "If it starts buzzing, get your butt back here and check the news. Easy cheesy."
Tonx and Cass had come up just as Cessus was fixing the dreadlock in place, and shortly afterwards a pair of sketchy-looking Hispanic guys came up next to him. One of them wore a light-colored suit of some fancy polymer-based fabric, light as silk and slightly transparent in the sleeves. The other guy looked like he'd gotten sunburned skiing, a sharp line under his eyes separating light skin from dark. He was pudgy, and didn't look at anyone.
They said a few words to Tonx in a slang Fede didn't understand, and Tonx nodded his head.
"Hey guys, I want you to meet Esco and Baby. They're friends of mine. Their boss is already in the contract."
They shook hands all around. When Marcus stood and leaned over the table to grasp Esco's the smaller man raised one carefully plucked eyebrow and grinned. Gleaming white teeth shone through his perfect lips as he asked; "Marcus, huh? I've seen your fights. Tight shit, nigger."
Fede could almost feel his eyes dilate. Esco was dark, but he looked Hispanic, not black. Fede suddenly had the idea that Marcus was going to reach over and crush the man's head.
Instead Marcus laughed and enfolded Esco's hand in a series of street grips.
"You know it, man. You mod too, or just naturally pretty?"
Esco jerked his head upwards at Marcus's chin. "Yeah, I'm mod. Strictly surface, though. How you support all that mass, man?"
The two walked over towards the truck so Marcus could get more water to wash down his supplements. Their street-slang patter faded into obscurity as they went.
Fede looked at Tonx, bewildered.
"What?" asked Tonx. "They're geeks, man. Both heavily modded. You think you computer jockeys got a corner on the market for obsessive hobbies?"
Fede forced a smile and looked at his shoes. His cheeks burned.
"What" he coughed, glanced at Esco's retreating back. "What's that guys mod?"
"Mods" corrected Tonx. "Major facial surgery, bone and muscle reconstruction. Probably lots of carefully balanced muscle therapy, some glandular adjustments. Possibly vocal chord tweaks, and definitely lots of depilation."
He glanced over at Baby, who shrugged.
"Point is" Tonx said "the guy's invested a whole lot of time and effort to reshape his body into an ideal. It's a more careful thing than just buffing out a six-pack. More of an art thing. Same as Marcus - just a different ideal."
"Oh" said Fed, feeling stupid.
Baby faded away, wandering slowly off towards the tents.
"Where's the guy who supplied the data set?" asked Fed. "The Frenchman?"
"Don't ask" said Tonx, grimacing. "You'll meet him soon enough."
Cass stood and stretched her long arms, her bikini sticking to her like it was painted on. It may have been, thought Fed.
"I'm going body boarding" she announced. "Anybody want to come?"
"Sorry, sweetheart. I got work to do" said Tonx. He eyed Fed.
"Why don't you take my bro, here?" he asked.
"What?" asked Fed.
Cass sized him up, the corners of her lips pulling back to reveal a pure, pretty smile.
"Yeah. Want to learn, Feed? Be good for those legs of yours… "
After a little more prodding he'd swapped in his grimy jeans and shirt for a pair of board shorts and gone out to try drowning. Cass said she'd learned to body board while she was couch surfing in California. She was a good teacher. Fede was surprised to find the water comfortably warm, and after catching a few waves he was laughing out loud and running back for more.
The day wore on, and Fede found himself forgetting about the code, the launch, the computers in China. He caught some good waves, got a sunburn, let Cass disappear to catch some better surf further down the beach. Eventually he bailed out; his skinny city kid arms were aching from trying to paddle out to the good waves. The rest of the afternoon went quickly, a nap on the futons followed by a dinner of BBQ pork ribs, thawed and flash-cooked in one of the trucks.
The sunset painted the sea all kinds of colors and Marcus showed him some of the basics of his fighting style, Gracie Jujitsu. It reminded Fede of wrestling with his dad when he was a kid, and Tonx and Cessus joined in, all three of them scrabbling and grabbing to pull Marcus down. Eventually the big man got a hold on all of them, and everybody went into the ocean together.
Fede skipped the martini that night, sitting with the group of them as night fell. As it turned dark he began to feel out of place, separate from everybody. They were talking a lot about the mod scene, laughing about people and making jokes about things Fede knew nothing about. Even Cass was part of it all. Fede guessed she was as mod as any of them, what with getting weird hormone therapies since childhood. Fede didn't know anything about it. He didn't have any mods, hadn't ever thought about getting any. He'd always had his head down, working on code. Watching the group of them laugh and argue he realized he was missing something. He missed feeling like a part of something, like a part of them. Like he belonged somewhere other than behind a keyboard.
After a while he excused himself and went to the bar. The German woman was there, big smile in place. She laughed as Fed approached and asked him if he wanted beer or a cocktail. He asked for something sweet and she gave him an oddly shaped bottle full of something pink. It had bumps and ridges and was oddly phallic, but he felt embarrassed asking her for something else, so he took it and left. It was good, sugary-sweet and citric.
He went down the beach on the other side of the bar, found a seat in the quite space between the tents and the shoreline. The night surrounded him, full of sound. He took a pull from his drink and noticed a figure approaching.
It was a short thin man in one of the ubiquitous Hawaiian shirts and shorts from the trucks. He had a hooknose and carefully fashionable hair, and something about him screamed European. Fed wondered how anyone could look European in Bermuda shorts and a floral-print Hawaiian shirt, but there he was.
"You are Tonx's brother, no?" the man asked. He had a thick French accent.
"Uh, yeah" said Fed. The man's eyes were supernaturally bright, the skin of his face tight. He looked like he was repressing a laugh.
"Then it is my honor to meet you" he said. "I am Poulpe. But you may call me Poulpe. I am in your debt. You have afforded me my freedom."
Fede took the man's hand and they shook once, firmly. Poulpe sat down next to him, carefully arranging his legs in front of him.
"I haven't afforded anybody anything yet" said Fed.
"Nonsense" said Poulpe. "I'm here now, yes?"
He seemed to be waiting for an answer.
"Uh, yes" agreed Fed.
"So. Then you have done me a great service. Is your recombinant processing in place?" Poulpe asked.
Fede dug his toes into the sand, pushed the corner of his lip between his teeth with one finger.
Poulpe cocked his head to look at him, and Fede met his eye.
"Yeah" he said.
"It goes well?" asked Poulpe.
"I guess so" said Fed. "We won't know for a while. So far it looks good. But there's no guarantees… " he let his sentence trail off into silence.
"That is all we can do, no?" said Poulpe. "We do our best, make things of beauty, and celebrate life. It is striving that makes it worthwhile, don't you think?"
Tonx's voice drifted over the beach, the end of a joke followed by raucous laughter. The ocean broke against the shore and erased the sound. Fede thought of his code, of the application's shape, the way it fit in his mind.
"Yeah" he agreed. "That's all we can do."
Poulpe smiled, a wide white grin. He thin lips stretched tight over his teeth and he made a long se
ries of grunts. Fed realized he was laughing.
"Very good then" he said. "The night is beautiful… "
He cocked his head again, looked at Fede questioningly.
"Fed" Fede said.
"I thought you were called 'Feed'?" asked Poulpe.
"That's not my name" said Fed. "My name's Fed."
"Very well. Fede it is" said Poulpe. He smiled again, apparently delighted.
"Allow me to celebrate you" he said.
Poulpe pulled out a small silver container, its scratched surface showing a tiny cartoon monster done in red plastpaint over the bare metal. He opened it with a smooth twist and held it towards Fed. There were a dozen pink candies inside, rounded squares like little creamy pillows.
The ocean roared.
After a moment Feed took one, popped it in his mouth and reached for his drink.
"No no no" said Poulpe. "Taste it. Savor it. This night is here for you to enjoy. Take all your time."
The strange little man smiled at Fede again and leaned back, closed his eyes. After a while Fede did the same. He listened to the sound of the waves. The candy tasted tangy against his tongue, artificial cherry flavor filling his mouth. Some time later Poulpe got up and wordlessly walked away into the darkness. Fede didn't mind.
The beach called to him, long slender waves like girl's arms sighing his name, begging for his company. He rose and walked down through the moonlight. The stars overhead glimmered and danced, shrinking and flaring through the edges of his vision. The silvery light rolled over the crests and dips of the beach, footprints of ancients next to his own, dripping and flowing over everything. He started, noticed the water was moving still. And again. He moved on.
Suddenly he was standing in the surf, felt the wet cling of the water on his pants' legs. He didn't remember coming here. The water was warm, welcoming. It ran, soft and gentle, up his leg. It kissed the hairs on his thighs, each one individually.
Out in the middle distance the dark line where the sea met the sky twisted and jumped. Fede gasped, stumbled back out of the water. He noticed the moon. It was - lonely.
Fede was sitting on the beach. He was dry, his whole body was soft and malleable, putty-like. He felt the lumps of the beach under his ass, the way his muscles rolled over them. The stars overhead called to him, he felt like they had been calling him for a long time, and he looked up. It was his first look, ever, to see the sky. It was beautiful.
He felt that part of him that was his humanity dance and jiggle inside him. He was human, it was so beautiful to be so human. So full of pride and spite and beauty. He pulled on his goggles, set the opacity to minimum, and watched the stars wink through the scan lines.
He began coding the universe.
Time passed.
He started, realized the sun had risen.
Cessus came and said some things, came again and brought him a sandwich and a bottle of water. He didn't touch them.
Some time later, Tonx came and carried him back to camp.
He slept.
Chapter 37
A long time later Fede woke to a gentle buzzing against his face. He woke slowly, wiping one hand against his cheek and rolling over, the soft edges of his consciousness curious but lazy. The sensation faded.
He woke again, unsure how much time had passed, suddenly aware of what the feeling had been and of what it had meant. He sat up. There was sand on the futon, his stumps itchy where a bit of seaweed had stuck to them. His brain reeled, and he staggered up and out of the truck. It was cold, the top of the beach soft with a thin layer of dew.
The chairs and tables were empty except for Cessus. His hair was unkempt, twisted dreads sticking out at odd angles atop his white robe. One long black leg stuck out cantilever, his foot buried in the sand, and his fingers drummed a mad beat on the tabletop.
Fede rounded the table and dropped into a chair, his thoughts confused. Cessus's eyes were distant over the horizon, the light of his lenses glimmering and winking against his corneas.
"What time is it? Did I sleep all day? What's going on?" asked Fed, fumbling to get his goggles into place.
Cessus grunted, then; "Morning; yes; and see for yourself."
Fede scanned the local data network and found Cessus's com. He logged in with his guest account and opened up a view.
His hands trembled.
"What's that?" he asked.
"That's your code. Those are results" said Cessus.
"But" said Fed. "But that's almost the complete data set."
Cessus let his hands fall flat on the table, turned towards Fed, smiled.
"You don't say" he said.
"But how?" asked Fed.
"It looks to me like your code took a while to propagate, but pretty much did as we'd planned. We got 67% penetration by midafternoon yesterday. That in itself is pretty good - better than expected. The spike in downloads from the data set peaked around 9 last night. Six hours later we started seeing results, and the upload rate has increased exponentially until now."
"That's… nine hours from the peak download of the data set to peak data return. That's incredible!" said Fed.
"That's some impressive fucking code is what it is" laughed Cessus. "Go get Tonx. I'll keep monitoring this. We need to know how to verify our results, now that we have some."
Fede ran out to the tents, not sure which of the identical white cotton V-shapes was his brother's. He danced around between them, shuffling sand and shivering in the morning air, frantic with excitement.
"Tonx" he hissed, peering at sandals in front of a long tent. "Tonx!"
A bleary Japanese face stuck out from between the flaps of the tent. Fede caught a glimpse of shadowed tattoos spilling across the man's back before he met his steel-hard eyes. The head disappeared with a frown.
"Tonx" he hissed again, softer.
There was a rustling followed by a stream of quiet curses from the opposite side of the field of tents. Fede heard Cass's laugh and saw Tonx stagger into view, pulling on his shorts. He saw Fede and ran over, limping as he lost one sandal.
"Cessus comm'd me. What is it?" he asked.
"We got results. Almost the whole data set" said Fed. He was hopping up and down now, rubbing his goose-pimpled arms to keep warm. The sun broke over the horizon and spilled onto Tonx's face in a golden glow. He shaded his eyes, squinting at Fed.
"Already?" he asked.
"No shit. Cessus says my algorithms adapted faster than expected. China's networks are going to have a glut from all the traffic" he said. His own gut clenched as he realized what he'd said, thought about the high traffic rates Chinese officials would see from all over their network. The algorithm would be changing itself, spreading new versions with each iteration. If it was producing results at this kind of rate it must be rewriting itself on every system as fast as it could spread.
Fede stopped moving, pulled his chord out of his pocket and stared at Tonx's bare chest through the data field overlaid by his goggles. He pulled up a news filter, watched. There was nothing. No news from China about overworked systems, no decrease in traffic in or out of their networks - nothing unusual.
"Come on" he said, breathless. He turned to run back, but Tonx was already ahead of him.
They skidded to a stop next to Cessus just as Marcus was returning with a pair of cups of coffee. He looked at Tonx and handed one to him and one to Cessus and turned and went back towards the bar.
"Why aren't we seeing anything from China if we've got this sort of data rate?" asked Fed. "It should be propagating like mad and… "
Cessus held up one long hand, sipped from his coffee cup.
"Calm down and think it through. All this shit's load balanced. You wrote the code, Fed, you know that. It'll propagate, but no faster than standard updates would, and it's only a small subset of the code. It's a lot more processing than usual, but nothing that'd break anything down. Nothing China would want to brag about."
"But that data set is huge" said Fed. "Its crunching m
ajor numbers across… "
"Across thousands and thousands of computers" interrupted Cessus. "Dude, have faith in your code. It's exceeding your expectations. So be happy. I'm sure we'll see reports of congestion in the Chinese systems later on. Just because it isn't making the headlines doesn't mean it isn't working."
"Can I see what we've got?" asked Tonx. He was excited too, his face flushed pink and eyes wide.
"Sure, but it won't make any sense. It's filtering in bit by bit, so you won't be able to get any useful data for another couple hours. That's if we keep our current rate. It's leveled, by the way. Still freaking incredible turnaround time, though."
Fede ran back to pull on his jeans, cleaned and pressed in the truck with the water filtration system and delivered to him tied with brown twine. When he returned Tonx had gone to get some more clothes on himself and to ready his com. Once the full data set was returned he would have to run a simulation over the differences Fed's code recommended, but unlike the actual combination matching it should only take little while to confirm it made sense.
Fede and Cessus and Tonx huddled together over Cessus's laptop, pulling over a couple beach umbrellas for shade to make Cessus's screen readable as the sun came up. They drank hot coffee and, later, fresh rolls cooked by the bread machine in the bar. The data trickled in.
"That's it" said Cessus. They watched as the peaks and troughs of the uploads to the three online locations suddenly dropped. The lines bounced a few times, peaked once or twice, and went flat.
"We got it" he said. His fingers flew over the tabletop in front of the laptop's keyboard as he keyed in a copy function to Tonx's machine.
"All you, man" he said, pointing a long finger at Tonx.
Tonx started the process and Fede showed him how to connect the results screen over the network to Cessus's laptop so they could all watch. It didn't make much sense to him, number chains and DNA sequencing color-coded and flashing, but the rising progress bar was clear enough.
They sat, and waited. Cass came by, sat quietly next to Fede as she ate her breakfast. Marcus fussed about the truck, cleaning out cookie wrappers and soda bottles.
