Sunspot Jungle

by Bill Campbell

  The AI-traded fund called Vanguard Algo 5093 opened the data package it had bought for $187 million. It took nanoseconds to process the data. This was indeed an interesting market opportunity. Being the cautious sort, Vanguard Algo 5093 sought validation. At a random sample of a few thousand locations, it hired access to wearable lenses, to the anonymized data streams coming out of the eyes and brains of Nexus Corp customers, to tiny, insect-sized airborne drones. Only a small minority of the locations it tried had a set of eyes available within the one-second threshold it set, but those were sufficient. In every single location, the Pura Vita labels in view were red. Red for recall.

  Vanguard Algo 5093 leapt into action. SELL SHORT! SELL SHORT!

  It alerted its sibling Vanguard algorithms to the opportunity, earning a commission on their profits. It sent the required notifications to the few remaining human traders at the company as well, though it knew that they would respond far too slowly to make a difference

  Within milliseconds, Pura Vita Stock was plunging as tens of billions in Vanguard Algo assets bet against it. In the next few milliseconds, other AI traders around the world took note of the movement of the stock. Many of them primed by the day’s earlier short sale joined in now, pushing Pura Vita stock even lower.

  Thirty-two seconds after it had purchased this advance data, Vanguard Algo 5093 saw the first reports on Pura Vita’s inventory problem hit the wire. By then, $187 million in market intelligence had already netted it more than a billion in profits with more on the way as Pura Vita dipped even lower.

  Simon’s first warning was the stock ticker. Like so many other millionaires made of not-yet-vested stock options, he kept a ticker of his company’s stock permanently in view in his mind. On any given day it might flicker a bit up or down by a few tenths of a percent. More up than down for the last year, to be sure. Still, on a volatile day one could see a swing in either direction of as much as two percent. Nothing to be too worried about.

  He was immersing himself in data from a Tribeca clothing store—the one he’d seen with the lovely advertech today—when he noticed that the ticker in the corner of his mind’s eye was red. Bright red. Pulsating red.

  His attention flicked to it.

  -11.4%

  What?

  It plunged even as he watched.

  -12.6%

  -13.3%

  -15.1%

  What the hell? He mentally zoomed in on the ticker to get the news. The headline struck him like a blow.

  PURA VITA BOTTLES EXPIRING IN MILLIONS OF LOCATIONS.

  No. This didn’t make any sense. He called up the sales and marketing AI on his terminal.

  Nothing.

  Huh?

  He tried again.

  Nothing.

  The AI was down.

  He tried the inventory management AI next.

  Nothing.

  Again.

  Nothing.

  Simon was sweating now. He could feel the hum as the smart lining of his suit started running its compressors, struggling to cool him off. But it wasn’t fast enough. Sweat beaded on his brow, on his upper lip. There was a knot in his stomach.

  He pulled up voice, clicked to connect to IT. Oh, thank god.

  Then routed to voicemail.

  Oh, no. Oh, please no.

  -28.7%.

  -30.2%

  -31.1%

  -33.9%

  It was evening before IT called back. They’d managed to reboot the AIs. A worm had taken them out somehow, had spread new code to all the Pura Vita bottles through the market intelligence update channel. And then it had disabled the remote update feature on the bottles. To fix those units, they needed to reach each one physically. Almost a billion bottles. That would take whole days!

  It was a disaster. And there was worse.

  NutriYum had sealed up the market, had closed six-month deals with tens of thousands of retailers. Their channel was gone, eviscerated.

  And with it, Simon’s life.

  The credit notice came soon after. His options were worthless now. His most important asset was gone. And with it, so was the line of credit he’d been using to finance his life.

  [NOTICE OF CREDIT DOWNGRADE]

  The message flashed across his mind. Not just any downgrade. Down to zero. Down into the red. Junk status.

  The other calls came within seconds of his credit downgrade. Everything he had—his midtown penthouse apartment, his vacation place in the Bahamas, his fractional jet share—they were all backed by that line of credit. He’d been living well beyond his means. And now the cards came tumbling down.

  [NexusCorp Alert: Hello, valued customer! We have detected a problem with your account. We are temporarily downgrading your neural implant service to the free, ad-sponsored version. You can correct this at any time by submitting payment here.]

  Simon clutched his head in horror. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t.

  Numbly, he stumbled out of his office and down the corridor. Lurid product adverts swam at him from the open door to the break room. He pushed past them. He had to get home somehow, get to his apartment, do … something.

  He half-collapsed into the elevator, fought to keep himself from hyperventilating as it dropped to the lobby floor. Adverts from the lobby restaurants flashed at him from the wall panel as they dropped, inundating him with juicy steak flavor, glorious red wine aroma, the laughter and bonhomie of friends he didn’t have. The ads he habitually blocked out reached him raw and unfiltered now with an intensity he wasn’t accustomed to in his exclusive, ad-free life. He crawled back as far as he could into the corner of the lift, whimpering, struggling to escape the barrage. The doors opened, and he bolted forward into the lobby and the crowd, heading out, out into the city.

  The snack bar caught him first. It reached right into him with its scents and flavors and the incredible joy a bite of a YumDog would bring him. He stumbled towards the snack bar, unthinkingly. His mouth was dry, parched, a desert. He was so hot in this suit, sweating, burning up, even as the suit’s pumps ran faster and faster to cool him down.

  Water. He needed water.

  He blinked to clear his vision, searching, searching for a refreshing Pura Vita.

  All he saw was NutriYum. He stared at the bottles, the shelves upon shelves of them. And the NutriYum stared back into him. It saw his thirst. It saw the desert of his mouth, the parched landscape of his throat, and it whispered to him of sweet relief, of an endless cool stream to quench that thirst.

  Simon stumbled forward another step. His fingers closed around a bottle of cold, perfect NutriYum. Beads of condensation broke refreshingly against his fingers.

  Drink me, the bottle whispered to him. And I’ll make all your cares go away.

  The dry earth of his throat threatened to crack. His sinuses were a ruin of flame. He shouldn’t do this. He couldn’t do this.

  Simon brought his other hand to the bottle, twisted off the cap, and tipped it back, letting the sweet, cold water quench the horrid cracking heat within him.

  Pure bliss washed through him, bliss like he’d never known. This was nectar. This was perfection.

  Some small part of Simon’s brain told him that it was all a trick. Direct neural stimulation. Dopamine release. Pleasure center activation. Reinforcement conditioning.

  And he knew this. But the rest of him didn’t care.

  Simon was a NutriYum man now. And always would be.

  Underworld 101

  Mame Bougouma Diene

  Freshman Year

  I can’t remember graduating from high school, I can’t remember applying to Sheikh Anta Diop University either, all I ever wanted was to get my ass to Zim and its space harvesting programs. Not that it’s the oddest thing here. I should remember, though, the tassels and silly hats, borrowed from America when it still counted for something. Senegal changed along with the rest of the world, then the world changed with Africa. Then we messed up, too. Some miscalculation in the atmospheric weather drones
. It’s all desert now, everywhere … Anyway, I need to get my ass out of bed. Class starts at 7:45 a.m. sharp, couldn’t tell you which class, though. Must be forgetting something again …

  “Wassup, Bougouma?”

  Not a damn thing. Let me tell you about my name. “Mame Bougouma Diene” literally translates into “Grandpa doesn’t want fish.” And this is Dakar. Who doesn’t want fish? Or didn’t. When you could still get any. My parents really pulled a number on me. Tradition, man …

  “I’m good, Ablaye. Na’nga def?”

  Ablaye isn’t much of a brain. He’s a hell of a wrestler, though. Bare knuckle fighting will do that, plus seven feet and three hundred pounds of muscle. We grew up together. That’s to say he grew and kept growing long after I stopped.

  “Mangi fi sama rak. Ran into your baby brother again today.”

  Another oddity. Everybody runs into Djibril except me. The stupid kid gets his ass everywhere and knows better than getting in my way.

  “Next time, whoop his butt for me.”

  Ablaye laughs the laugh of someone strong enough to halt a Chadian tank with one punch.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he says, ramming an elbow into my ribs. “Elder bro’s privilege.”

  Damn right …

  “Beers later?”

  What I mean is carbonated battery acid.

  “Always, grandpa.”

  Another odd thing, but in a Harry Potter kinda way, so I guess it’s all right, like Diagon Alley and the hearth, except it’s to the classrooms and through the shitter. Imagine having to fall backwards when you flush into the exact same place where you shit. I mean … you get used to it, but then people got used to so many people you can’t walk down a city block in less than an hour, to eating people because we have nothing left.

  So you get used to it. There’s no smell. It’s the sensation that’s weird, as if your body was stretched and snapped like a rubber band and then disintegrated. I mean that last bit exactly as I said it, and I know it’s true because of the consciousness. One moment there’s only me, one voice in my head and then upwards of a million, each one rehashing some random memory; and I can feel them all, or they can all feel me, or we can all feel each other or each self. Actually, what’s truly bizarre is why waste such brilliant technology on a bunch of college students?

  The Virtual College simulators we used in high school hadn’t mentioned that …

  Anyway, whatever the reason, it only lasts a few milliseconds multiplied by the millions of you, and you’re suddenly reconnected, stretched out again and dropped from the ceiling right into your chair for class.

  Maybe it’s all for nothing. The likelihood of finding a job when I graduate is close to zero, but poor kids don’t get the opportunity for higher learning very often. Too little space, too many people. It’s a rich man’s privilege, so I’m gonna get my diploma. Then who knows? Maybe lightning will strike twice.

  My butt hits my chair softly, and I’m staring out the window at the throngs of people trying to make it to the food banks and back in less than a day, streaming like sewage between seven hundred-story buildings. One hundred and forty million people crammed into a space that barely accommodated two million a hundred years ago …

  Apparently, it still beats living outside the cities where the population densities are lower but no food banks. Perhaps they recycle their own dead.

  “Someone’s about to get zapped,” Sokhna whispers next to me. I hadn’t even noticed her, fascinated by the human anthill.

  “Where?”

  She leans over, smelling of synthetic coconut oil, and points at a group of people fighting over rations. Her eyes are good and a beautiful dark blue.

  There’re always people too lazy to make it to the food banks. How many times my mother made it there and back is a miracle. Must’ve been hard for her, losing her husband to the Underworld Project and raising two little knuckleheads.

  “You have a hawk’s eyes.”

  “What’s a hawk?”

  I chuckle.

  “Never played Virtual Nature?”

  “Never saw the point.”

  She had one there.

  The fighting party is causing a commotion. Other people are hungry and in a hurry. It will turn into riot any moment.

  A police helithopter drops between the buildings, green-starred over red, yellow, and green, contrasting with the bleakness of the buildings, and zeroes in on the fighters.

  “They won’t zap them, girl. Why waste the protein?”

  Sokhna grunts, but I’m right. The helithopter drops an antigravity beam on the crowd, glowing pale orange and buzzing like a thousand angry flies, drawing the offenders into its hull.

  “More food for the bank.”

  Sokhna shrugs.

  The classroom filled up. Everybody busying on their lesson pads, hands over their eyes, mouths moving silently in last-minute cramming.

  “What’s all the fuss about?”

  Now Sokhna laughs.

  “Idiot. Forgot about the test, didn’t you?”

  “What test?!”

  “Exactly … You’re growing senile, grandpa … The test Pr. Diop mentioned last week? If you pass, you don’t take the final?”

  Fuck! I knew I’d forgotten something.

  “It’s cool. I’m good at this econometric stuff.”

  Sokhna smiles. She really does have a beautiful smile, pearly white teeth, lips a mellow red, her straight hair in a ponytail, and a nose that balances the symmetry of her cheekbones perfectly.

  “You better.” She puts her hand on mine. “I’d hate it if you didn’t come back next year.”

  “Salam alaikum.”

  “Alaikum salam, Pr. Diop.”

  “Take out your tablets. I hope you’ve studied hard.”

  “Djibril, kai fi!”

  “Wow, kai! Five more minutes!”

  “Put that simulator down and come here now!”

  “Why, mom?! It worked for Mame, didn’t it?”

  “Your brother always had big-headed dreams he couldn’t achieve. College and then what? He’ll end up in the Underworld Project just like your father, just like everybody else. A head full of garbage that won’t help swinging a hammer. Now get over here!”

  Unless he makes management, Djibril thought, removing his Virtual College simulator. If only he’d write more often …

  “Well, that was relatively painless.”

  Truth is, I probably fluked the stupid test, but it’s better to fail because I hadn’t tried than to try and fail anyway.

  “You know you’ve messed up,” Sokhna snaps back. “You better kill that final.”

  In a world of a hundred fifty billion people, you’d think the odds were higher of finding someone who cared for you. But it’s the exact opposite. The more people, the more selfish we get. So I’m lucky. The luckiest man alive. Perhaps she just wants someone caring for her and is playing her cards right, but she’s playing them with me, nobody else, me. And that counts for something. It counts for everything.

  “Easy for you to say. Your father was an official.” I tell her, stating the obvious, “General Sankare. You’ve nothing to worry about.”

  I’m a fuckin’ idiot. Acting tougher than I feel, despite needing her more than I’ll ever care to admit, just to keep her guessing.

  “Was being the operative word. No one remembers the Sahelien War anymore. Competition’s hard at the top, too, Bougouma.”

  She’s right. Upper middle classes play assassination games to stay ahead. At least us poor folk don’t, but then we’re busy fighting each other for food bank scraps, so we don’t end up food ourselves.

  “Saw your little brother today, by the way.”

  “Don’t you all? Ablaye said the same thing yesterday.”

  “Ha! He’s sneaky, your brother, was in the cafeteria chatting up some girl. Family thing, huh?”

  Hate to say, but I love the kid. Different planet, different time, and he could have had the world.
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  “He’s better off out of my way.”

  “Keep telling yourself that.” She heads down the hallway. “See you at the wrestling training bouts tonight?”

  “Any chance of seeing you elsewhere?” I ask, grinning.

  She caresses my cheek.

  “I’ll try,” she answers with a smile and disappears into a wave of students.

  But she won’t. That’s odd, too. I still haven’t found the girl’s dorms. I can always snatch a kiss in the hallway, but she never makes it to my room. The toilets get us to the cafeteria at any time, but the moment I step away from the academic buildings, I can’t find my way anywhere. All I see is a pixelated maze and lights that must be buildings that never get closer. I’m tired of jacking off, let me tell you …

  Sophomore Year

  “So!” Ablaye says, slapping my back, jamming my kidneys into my lungs. “You actually passed? You need to quit all this thinking and start punching,” he finishes, grinding his fists.

  “Meatheads punch their way. I’ve got my eyes on the prize.”

  He laughs again.

  “Let me guess. Sokhna, huh? A clever one, that one … Too good for you. Look at me, I get all the girls I want.”

  That’s true, wrestlers have their pick, maybe he can tell me how he finds their dorms or how they find him …

  “You mean you’re not good enough for her, ox brain … Anyway, glad I still have friends around this year …”

  The hall has filled up. I can’t tell half the faces. Sometimes it felt like they’d admit just about anyone, but where do they all go? There is no way the school can handle this many students …

  “You’re back!” Sokhna screams, her arms around my neck, assaulting me by the yard between buildings. The heat blasts my face, but her smell and the pressure of her chest against mine make me forget everything else.

  “Told you I would …”

  “And you know better than disappointing me, dé!”

  Maybe I do. Had I forgotten how beautiful she was over the summer? Or maybe she just got prettier every day …

  “How was your break?” I ask, taking her by the hand and away from the dusty heat.