by Joshua Klein
Fede didn't care. He liked the jacket. It was too short in the arms, but both he and Cessus ignored the fact, and it looked good with his goggles hanging around his neck. And the old white tee they'd gotten in the bargain was clean, which was a bonus.
"Matches your hair" said Cessus, knocking his skull gently. It was true; the gel had hardened overnight into a carefully manicured shell, comb-lines like record grooves across his skull.
They entered the center of electronics area and Fede was immediately lost. He'd never seen so many LEDs or wires or tiny miniaturized components in one place. It was geek heaven, and despite not knowing much about hardware he was instantly entranced. Cessus bought a wooden picnic basket first thing and began haggling components into it like a pro. One of their first big finds was a tall stack of disposable cameras. The proprietor mimed taking a picture and stabbed the air with his middle finger, and in the end they had to make him write it down and use their comm's character recognition to find out the cameras were all equipped with only one shot. As soon as Cessus read that he was on the guy like a shark on bait, and they soon had a couple dozen of them wrapped in monofilament plastic in the bottom of their basket.
"What a deal" snickered Cessus as they strolled on. "Glad we made him write it down, the little demon. Thought he'd sucker the foreigners, did he?"
"What are you going to do with them?" asked Fed.
"The capacitors in these things are enormous. A few wires, a little tape, and you got yourself a crazy powerful stun-gun that looks like a camera" he said. "Neat trick I learned as a kid. You'll love it. Here, hold this."
He made Fede hold a large glass jar while he sorted tiny capacitors into it.
Almost an hour later the basket was nearly unliftable, and Cessus was arguing with a tiny wizened woman over an equally tiny toolset.
"These sockets aren't worth shit" Cessus insisted, miming trying to turn a screw. The woman smiled and demonstrated how she couldn't tear them apart using both hands.
Fede was getting tired of shopping. As he shifted the basket he turned to see a mirror image of himself stop suddenly at the end of the aisle. There was a group of five young men, all roughly his age, each clad in tight highwater pants and patent-leather shoes, each wearing an identical leather motorcycle jacket over a white tee shirt. Fede blinked, noticed they were staring back at him.
His head swam. Their black hair was all waxed down in careful curves, and as he looked their shock vanished and they all stood straight, looking suddenly casual. Fede stepped closer to Cessus, trying to get his attention as the boys bore down on them.
Cessus waved Fede off and made a show of tossing the set back on a pile of plastic slippers. Fede turned to find the lead boy standing directly in front of him, staring at his hair.
The boy nodded.
Fede inhaled, nodded back.
The boys broke into smiles and bobbed their heads enthusiastically at each other. Fede noticed that only the lead boy had a real leather jacket. The rest were made of pleather, fakes, with wear-marks pressed into the plastic. They began to yammer at him in Chinese, reaching out to finger his jacket, stroke his pants where the wool pulled tight against his thighs, poke the swivel joint in his new ankles. Fede stumbled back a little, bumping into Cessus.
"Hey hey" Cessus yelled, turning. If he noticed the boys he didn't show it, and pulled Fede up only to push him back into the aisle. The woman called back to him and he rolled his eyes, returned to demand a better price.
The lead boy pointed at the bulge in Fed's pocket where his chord rested, mimed keying in a number. He repeated something, and suddenly the boys started pulling things from their pocket. One produced what looked like a pocket calculator, but with letters on it. Fede keyed in one of his comm numbers, not sure if it would route right through the Chinese proxies. It did, and in a moment the lead boy stood back, chewing his gum enthusiastically as Fed's comm buzzed. He keyed it on and a hiss of static rushed at him. The boy in front of him spoke, and half a second later a woman's voice came from his comm in a charming British accent;
"Glad to make your acquaintance. Are you American?"
Fede said yes, and the lead boy turned and announced something to the group. They all nodded again, heads bobbing madly.
"Are you here on vacation?" the boy spoke with the woman's voice again.
"Sort of" said Fed, then laughed as the boy cocked his head, confused.
"Yes" he said. More head bobbing.
"Are there many people with this outfit in America?" the voice asked.
Fede froze for a moment, panicked.
"No" he said, deciding to go with the truth. The boy stared back at him, waiting.
"It's special" he said. This met with mad applause and much bowing as the lead boy repeated it to the others.
"Do you like Pokey?" the voice asked.
"What in holy hell is going on?" asked Cessus, one hand holding the tiny toolset wrapped neatly in plastic film.
"What's Pokey?" Fede asked.
Cessus shrugged. The boys gestured ahead of themselves in invitation. "Let's find out" he said.
Chapter 46
Several hours later Fede found himself dancing on an elevated square platform done in translucent plastic panels. Each panel flashed different colors and patterns in tune to frantic remixed American classics. A sticky-sweet pop version of Route 66 was rumbling off the platform at 100 beats per minute. With his new legs he held out like a champ, but he was no match for the local competition. The song ended and he laughingly dismounted. He'd scored 437,002 points against the other guy's 12,879,982. They both shrugged on their matching jackets and bowed, smiling. The lead boy, the other guy with a real leather jacket, got up onto the platform and the group hushed. He was squared off against a girl dressed in lacy black Victorian clothing, her face painted white and her hair a shiny violet. The music started and their skinny arms began to flail and weave in unison as their feet flew beneath them, music throbbing.
Cessus had found a 3D version of an ancient classic, Pac Man, and was bobbing along he rode the big inflated yellow ball mounted at its base. The arcade was in one corner of a giant warehouse that looked like Mardi Gras for the pop-culture obsessed. The giant sign over the door had said "Pee-Pee", which Cessus insisted was a Chinese word. That didn't make any sense to Fed, and neither did the shops or crowds inside it. Everyone was Fed's age or younger, from the storekeepers to the security guards. If they really were security guards. For all Fede could tell they were just more costumes. Music spilled from every door, window, or backpack, a giant clash of cross-cultures and colors.
The group they had fallen in with called themselves "Cassicoos." ('Classicals' interpreted Cessus) and they pushed through the throng with the authority of ownership. Eventually they dined in a shop that sold tiny yoghurt-dipped cookie sticks, exclusively. Fede stuck with mint chocolate, but Cessus tried the curry and something called Kim Chee, and smilingly declared that they were both disgusting. Afterwards they hit the arcade, watching as their guy made a jumping spin at the finale of the song and scored a 15-point lead over the painfully cute girl dancing against him. The machine flashed and shook, and the couple bowed politely to each other, thin chests heaving. They jumped off the platform, but before the girl could join her group of black-clad sisters the boy ran over to them. He raised his comm towards her in silent inquiry, shoulders back and smile wide. Identical plain white fans flew out as the girls all hid behind them, giggling, but the girl nodded and bowed and blushed, and eventually pulled a comm shaped like a tiny green penguin out of her thin beaded purse. She leaned demurely over and gently touched its head to his comm. Then she skipped back and hid behind her fan, surrounded by her companions as they fled the scene. Their guy swaggered back to the rest of them, pulling on his leather jacket with a flourish, brandishing his comm. PAN-activated number exchange, Fede thought. He'd heard of it, but wasn't it kid stuff? Having to touch comms to exchange numbers seemed painfully inconvenient until he realized how crowd
ed it was here. Maybe it wasn't such a bad idea, after all. Besides, he had to admit it was more romantic than doing it wirelessly.
Cessus returned from the Pac-Man game, dreads bouncing as he towered over everybody. "Hey Feed, we probably ought to hit it. You think these boys have a suggestion on where to go for some good 'net connectivity?"
It turned out that the question was a tough one, causing a ruckus among the Cassicoos as they argued over where to go next. Eventually the lead boy won out and gestured for them to follow him. He led them towards the back of the warehouse and out a metal door between two stores selling plush animal costumes. They emerged in a dark alley, the boys surrounding them and ushering them quickly out and onto a main street. Throngs of traffic crept past, businessmen in suits sliding past hip-to-hip as they pushed through the crowd. They climbed over a small fence dividing two directions of foot traffic and squeezed through a glass-walled arcade, plain-looking military-style clothing on dummies standing antiseptic under bright LED spots. Young women with heavily branded shopping bags laughed and stared as they went by, not glancing twice at their accompanying group of identical Cassicoos. They emerged in a courtyard and one boy thumbed a code into a number pad on the far doorway, pulling them into a hallway. They filed down a flight of stairs, the railway rattling, and came out into an identical hallway. As they were emerging from the stairs the lead boy pulled up short, and an angry adult voice filtered up past him. Fede peered around the doorway to see a large man in matching brown shirt and pants, hands on his hips uttering clipped sentences at the lead boy. He waved his hands back towards the stairway and the boys raised a clamor of protesting voices.
The guy immediately in front of Fede turned suddenly, slipping by and heading back up the stairway. A moment after he'd disappeared a loud buzzing noise erupted from the open doorway beside the man in front of them. He stared into the room and yelled at them one last time as he went inside. The boys grabbed Fede and Cessus and they tore down the hallway and out a door at its end.
They came out onto a rooftop platform, basketball courts and tennis nets traced onto its stippled tar surface in neon paints. The boys flew across the rooftop in single file, descending a rickety metal spiral staircase bolted to the side of the building and down into a long alley. Cement walls raised on all sides. They paused and caught their breath. There were tennis balls littering the alley, rolled up along its edge and tangled in heaps of rain-stained posters. Their guides stood, brushing invisible dust from their jackets.
"Otaku" said the lead boy, pointing at the dead-end wall at the butt of the alley. It was plain cement, fused in vertical panels eight feet by five.
"Otaku" he said again, miming typing on a keyboard. They walked to the wall and stood nervously in front of it. The lead boy cleared his throat and announced something Fede couldn't understand. Nothing happened. He said whatever it was again, and one boy laughed. A few more minutes passed and the remaining boys turned away, defeated. Mockery erupted at the lead boy, who threw down his hands in defeat and spat towards the wall.
As they turned they saw Cessus leaning back, staring up towards the lip of the building opposite, lenses out and lights flashing. His hands hung down, fingers padding gently against the cement supporting him. A loose smile traced his lips.
"Cessus?" asked Fed.
"Don't bother me" he mumbled. "Fucking tight shit, man."
The remaining boys stood around awkwardly, the situation suddenly out of their control. Their leader was starting to punch in a call to Fede when a door they somehow hadn't seen opened in the wall opposite Cessus. A young man stepped out of the shadow, older than Fede but younger than Cessus, long straight black hair bound loosely behind his neck. He held up a hand towards Cessus.
"Stop, please. You are hurting our firewall" he said.
"That's because your port-knocking was weak. Your ACKs turned me onto the sequence and you followed it with a straight password challenge" said Cessus.
"Yes, but now you are dictionary attacking our password challenge with many many dictionaries. Routing attacks from outside is blocking our traffic" he said.
"You should have an IP blocking mechanism" said Cessus.
"We have such a mechanism, but your floods are dynamic, and anticipated it" the man said.
Cessus nodded, and his fingers danced a rhythm on the wall behind him. The man paused, listening to something they could not here.
"Thank you" he said. "Welcome to Otaku. Please come in."
As they entered the building they realized the walls were translucent from the inside. The alley was visible as a kind of fuzzy shadow, like looking through a shower door.
"Fiber-Optic mixed as a binding agent into the cement. One-way film laid on the inside" said the man with the long hair as he closed the door behind them. A sophisticated-looking set of shiny metal tubes suspended the door, a six-inch slab of the same kind of cement, and it slid closed smoothly under his hand.
"I am Xing" he said, bowing slightly to each of them. Fede touched the wall, running his finger over its surface. It had been cast in place with some sort of wooden board. The swirls and whorls were etched in its surface, nearly invisible in its translucence.
Cessus whistled as he turned, ducking to avoid the metal framework suspended from the low ceiling. The room was long, maybe fifty feet by thirty, and was filled with row upon row of angular wooden chairs. Each chair contained a Chinese boy, each face obscured by some kind of plain white mask. The masks terminated in a thick plug, the plug tracing into a cable that ran upwards and disappeared into a neatly bound series of master wiring on the gridded framework overhead. Xing gestured towards the back of the room and they followed, passing by a long row of boys on exercise bikes facing the wall. Each of these boys had a wide blue plastic yoke taped over their shoulders and bound into their masks' plug. The bikes were all wired, the wiring leading up and away via the overhead frame. Before Fede could see more they had passed into a hallway made of the same translucent cement.
"Otaku is Japanese word. Means someone who is obsessed with something, originally comic books or cartoon shows" said Xing. "Here, now, it means someone like us. We believe the computer is ultimate Otaku opportunity. Is self empowerment through interest."
He spread his hands, gestured towards the room they could see through the cement wall before them.
"We arrive in one location, everyone brings their own mask. Power via ethernet, so only one wire per person. Bikes make enough electricity so no noticeable new load is seen. Most processing is done off site. Everyone finds way to pass traffic. If police come, everyone take mask, there is nothing but ethernet cable to find. We come and go to new places, but this is oldest place. This is original Otaku."
"Why would the police come?" asked Fed.
Xing smiled, nodded. The Cassicoos all nodded back.
"We are hackers here" Xing said. "We are making software that is free, for everyone to use. It is not made with business license from government. This threatens their economic model. Not good closed-market capitalism."
"That's not illegal" scoffed Fed.
"Yes yes" agreed Xing, smiling. "Very illegal."
The top of the stair opened into a wide-open space, obviously once an office. Young men stood in groups around ancient dusty chalkboards, wires snaking over the floors and into assorted devices on the folding tables throughout the room. Some were clean-cut, like Xing, but many sported wiry beards and food-stained tee shirts, some with shorts and sandals. As they emerged the room grew silent and all eyes turned towards them.
"Welcome to Otaku" said Xing again. "I understand you need fat pipe?"
Cessus coughed and looked at Fed. "We do?" he asked.
"Fat pipe is serious problem in China" said Xing. "Right now is even bigger problem. Big virus has affected most systems. Ours is protected, but rest of the network is very hurry."
Fede felt his face flush.
"You were very clever with our doorway. Figured out we are with Faraday over most
of building, but have a window there" Xing pointed to a large plate-glass window. The alley beyond was slightly hazy, and it took Fede a moment to remember the large advertisement for Pocky stretched over the wall in the alley outside. It must have been perforated with micro-holes, to allow them to see out from inside.
"Maybe you can help us with connection through traffic problem to outside world?" he asked. "Then you can get fat pipe."
Cessus made a soft strangling noise.
"Can I make a comm call?" asked Fed, his voice oddly pitched.
Chapter 47
Tonx hadn't been able to offer them much advice. He said they'd traced the location of the box, but it was in a massive high-rise so they were having trouble finding which room.
"Look in the directory" Fede had said.
"It's a hundred story building" Tonx had said before hanging up "and we don't have a name."
Cessus had plugged into Xing's network after giving them a small show of his sliding glasses. They did not seem very impressed until he plugged what he was seeing into a box the size of a loaf of bread that projected its image against a far wall. It's resolution was fantastic, easily as good as what Fede saw in his goggles less than a half-inch away from his eyes.
"What is that?" he'd gaped.
"Multi-laser projection system. New from Korea, not yet sold in U.S." Xing had said.
Cessus's first move had been to scan their system's security, which they seemed to take as a given. When he started propping columns of data flows as part of his background image they had begun to murmur, and when he'd started plucking bits of data out of all of them at once they'd started getting upset. One man in particular, a round, bearded guy with a bare head and coke shirt had started yelling and gesturing at Cessus until Xing had quietly said a few words to him. That had shut him up, but everyone was clearly equally excited.
