by Bright,R. F.
“Aye. A heavy purse makes a light heart.”
“Yeah. Look what it did for me dear old dad.”
Boyne had long ago, inadvertently, mentioned his brother in public; it cost him his life. “So where’d they get all dat pelf?” he asked.
“They earned it. They’re social entrepreneurs. Crypto-capitalist.”
“Crypto-capitalist?”
“They’re writing code only they understand. A whole new system with its own lexicon and symbols, and only they know how to use it. Just think what would happen if you overwrote every computer in the world with code only you understood. You’d control everything. You could delete the past, and start anew.
“They’re harnessing what they call participation bandwidth. You only have a voice if you participate, if you’re engaged. Tuke’s taking his cues from the world of play, not politics. Their new society isn’t based on living to work, but living to play. A level of engagement that will turn this world of mindless consumers back into — citizens.”
“You’re skinnin’ me now.”
“This is what happens when game designers, social media developers, your basic fun-ware makers design a society. I don’t know how you’re gonna tackle that. You can’t beat fun.”
“I’m a recent convert.”
“And! Did I mention the lots and lots and lots of smart people? Me included. I’m one of them. I’ll help, if they’ll let me. And did I tell ya about the KNim?”
“KNim?”
Plastikmutata turned grim. “The Knickerbocker Nimrod. The self-appointed vigilantes of the digital world. They do not forget. They do not forgive. And they love to destroy hackers who cross them. Dat’s der bailiwick.”
“I don’t have much truck with that technical stuff. And don’t tell me those names aren’t funny.”
“If you have a cell phone, they’re tracking you.”
Boyne laughed. “Not this one.”
“Don’t kid yourself. The KNim watches over The Massive. If you’re involved in anything Tuke, they’re tracking you.”
Plastikmutata put his hand on Boyne’s shoulder. “Sorry, Captain, but I’m rootin’ for the other team. The good guys.”
Boyne said meekly, “We’re the good guys, to our people.”
“Spare me. I’ve heard Freddy Cochran’s, ‘Not born in Ireland, Ireland born in us’ speech.” He turned and jogged down the steps.
Boyne stared after the young man, his only blood relative. What he’d said was probably true. If that was the case, he was at a crossroad. He’d have to pick a side. But who was going to win, he wondered?
Who will win?
29
Camille coiled her legs around the kitchen stool and gazed at her new computer. Just holding her head up was a struggle; focusing on the deceptively simple concepts of this game was impossible. She over-thought everything and stared far too intently at her screen until her eyelids turned to lead.
MISH said, “You have to create a data-matrix so you can tell what’s useful — how the data relate to each other. Every post that comes to you is a potentially useful piece of your puzzle.”
“MISH? What does all that mean?”
“Some posts will be extremely useful, some merely relevant, some not at all. Some might even be hostile. It’s up to you to determine what’s what.”
“OoooKaaaay.” She rested her arms on the island’s cold marble top.
“Don’t get bogged down in the theory, just play. Make your mistakes. Move on. Learn how. It will come to you quickly, once you get started.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” she said in a sloshy voice, cheek pressed against her arm.
“Although this is a machine, you should remember to behave like a human. Be civil. Treat those you meet here with respect. Make friends and allies. Your puzzle is being built with the pieces they bring to you. Take care of them. It’s all in the data.”
“OK.”
“This is a social game. It is being played in a virtual world, but it affects the real world, too. Think through everything, all the way out to the real world.”
“K.”
“The Tuke love letters are drawing a lot of attention. No one has ever posted anything like them. They’re gems, pure gems. Two hankies and a beach towel.”
MISH stopped. Camille had snuggled into her own arms, slumped across the kitchen island, sleeping soundly. MISH’s smile expanded into the silliest cartoon proportions. “And you, Camille Gager — you are in charge.” She grinned at a muffled snore.
“Perfect. Absolutely perfect.”
30
Efryn Boyne’s transporter drifted away from the Frick Mansion. “The Wall,” he said, lost in thought. Tuke had thrown a snag into his already complicated association with the Caflers. They were his bread and butter, but what a nightmare. How were they still hanging on? Given their lack of usefulness. Everyone was simply ignoring them. But they still had all the money. Da pelf. If he were to choose the winning side, his beloved Wall was the best place to figure it out.
The Wall belonged to the Leprechauns. Boyne had purloined it fair and square. An absurdly thin strip of America, where their hooligan culture was born. One block wide, ten miles long. Oh! One high wall, one high-street — that was how their national anthem began — always ended in tears. Three rivers and a wall, the anthem continues. Boyne claimed the street beneath the Wall and declared it their nation. New Hibernia Boulevard became the glorious capital of the first nation-street.
They collected taxes and bridge-tolls to keep things up, but the real revenue came from the Leprechauns’ principal industry, the maintenance of the defensive systems that protected the Pittsburgh Triangle and Manhattan Island. Each fiscal quarter a bill for mine laying, ordnance handling, masonry work, flood damage, general upkeep, capital depreciation and so on, arrived on Representative Mahesh Murthy’s desk. That’s how he’d heard about Boyne in the first place.
Boyne exploited Murthy mercilessly, but in the bargain had to grant occasional favors. This Tuke job was one of those. And he’d rather tear his own eyes out than go to his grave owing Murthy a favor.
The other side of the Wall was called the Burbclave — a suburban wasteland. A vast junk-culture storage area. The Preppers, once thought crazy, thrived there amongst the remains. Those who lived in the Burbclave feared the Leprechauns, but as long as they stayed on their side of the Wall they were left alone.
The First Mile of New Hibernia Boulevard was studded with four-star hotels, pricy bistros and trendy boutiques. The side-streets running off the First Mile were filled with cheesy jewelry shops, beer joints and polite bordellos, the kind with wine lists. The alley behind the First Mile was a festival of cock-fights, floating poker games, pole dancers, questionable whiskey, dreadful streetwalkers, bare-knuckle boxing and some of the world’s best ham and cabbage.
The irresistible allure of sex and danger, in a wide range of prices and payment plans, attracted a broad clientele. High-class money trickled down via a healthy personal security market for international highbrows slumming it. Hard-to-find commodities were always in surplus. Leprechaun Las Vegas.
Boyne was eager to talk to Freddy Cochran, the Wall Commander, twenty-nine years his senior and, like himself, Scots Irish. It was Freddy who’d convinced the young Efryn Boyne to ‘reinvent himself into a gentleman’ since there was nothing more to being a gentleman than the display of certain ‘prescribed mannerisms.’ All of which could be learned, Freddy promised, having done that very thing himself. He would slip Efryn’s larcenous heart into an entirely contrived and seemingly well-bred new creature. Unfortunately, during the building of the Wall Freddy had been shot in the hip by a sniper and had been hobbling around ever since spoiling for a chance to get even. Once the Wall was finished, Boyne named Freddy Wall Commander.
Boyne was deeply troubled as his transporter rolled toward the Wall. Damned nephew! What’s with that cumulative advantage shite? Changing rule sets? Mass collaboration? Independent actors? Crypto-c
apitalists? No losers? But what if Plastikmutata — he hated that name — were right? If competition itself were destined for the dust bin of history, and he knew enough to think that likely, what would become of him, an alpha predator?
The Driver swerved to miss a pot-hole, cringed, and turned onto the ramp for the Highland Park Bridge, gateway to the Wall. Travel past, under, or around this bridge was at the largesse of the Leprechauns. Guards were numerous and carefully chosen for their good looks and charm. No one wanted to spook the tourists.
Boyne’s transporter glided to a slow roll as a guard beckoned and escorted the transporter to the shoulder lane. Under the bridge, a dozen utility boats were moored in floating docks alongside a dozen river yachts. They drove through the V.I.P. gate and parked in front of the New Hibernia Administration Building. The Admin Building blended seamlessly into the rest of the Wall, being made from the same repurposed rubble. It was marked out by a sweeping marble staircase and cathedral-sized, hand-carved double doors with Celtic scrollwork salvaged from St. Brendan’s RC.
Boyne’s troop jumped out and headed down New Hibernia Boulevard, eager for a good meal. He dashed up the marble stairs, long micro-fiber coat flapping in the wind, pressing his plush hat to his head with one hand. He pushed through the massive doors and danced up the interior stairs toward Freddy Cochran’s office, where he was stopped dead by a stunning woman arguing with Cochran’s secretary about a permit.
“I can’t make those decisions until I have the permit. But I can’t get the permit until I make those decisions. Is that ridiculous?”
Cochran’s secretary, a second cousin on Freddy’s mother’s side, was numb to that question. She stared at the red-faced woman with a mix of boredom and disgust. “I’ve never even heard of you. There’s no paperwork. You don’t exist here. What the . . .” but before she could elaborate, Boyne stepped in.
“Please, please, ladies.”
The angry woman made an embarrassed grimace. “Oh. I’m sorry. Really! I’m shouting. So frustrating. They lost my paperwork. There’s no rhyme or reason to anything that happens here.”
Boyne gave her a quick once-over: wardrobe a must-have menu of investment-wear, including the highly fashionable retro Hillary Clinton pants suit that fit her muscular body just right. A well-tailored chocolate brown trench coat, much like his own, was draped over her arm. Her hair was in an oriental bun, a savvy nod to Asia, and held fast with two heavily enameled chopsticks.
Boyne stepped behind the beleaguered secretary, put both hands on her frail shoulders and smiled apologetically. “Nothing rhymes with reason in New Hibernia. An ancient curse.” The secretary stared at him like he was Jupiter and Mars.
The angry woman rolled her eyes. Freddy Cochran’s door was closed, but she could hear him shouting his half of a phone conversation. She shook her head, flabbergasted.
“I’m sorry,” said Boyne. “There’s a lot going on here.”
“No wonder,” she said sarcastically. She caught herself halfway into another eye-roll, but turned it into a silly sad-clown face, and laughed.
Boyne was captivated. She was over fifty, but as delightful as any nymph. For all her professional veneer, she couldn’t hide that part of herself that was eternally young and vulnerable. “My friend,” he nodded at Cochran’s door, “he’s fightin’ crime and corruption from both ends.” A lyrical brogue had suddenly appeared. “You have to understand the types who’ve stood in the very spot you’re now decoratin’. We don’t see many ladies of your . . . caliber, up here.”
She was no stranger to flattery, but this sudden up-tick took her by surprise. “I don’t know exactly what caliber means,” she said playfully. “Something about bullets? And! I have no idea what you mean by . . . lady.”
“Sadly, I am delinquent in all things la femme. Let me be your humble student, then. Aye? Show me your ways.”
“You recommend yourself by pleading ignorance?” she said, attempting a weak imitation of his blustering brogue. “Bit of a contradiction, aye?”
“Contradiction is a plague upon my people. A curse upon curses, but the source of many a fine limerick.”
“I thought fist-fighting and whiskey plagued your people.”
“Talkin’ to an Irishman about fist-fightin’ goes in one ear and right out onto the barroom floor.”
She almost rolled her eyes again, but cracked up instead. “I am sorry. I’m Angela. Angela Dobka.” She extended her hand and a glowing smile.
Boyne removed his hat, pressed it to his heart, took her hand in his and bowed over it in a gesture just short of a kiss. “Nár lagaí Dia do lámh!”
“Huh?”
“May God not weaken your grip.” He turned his eyes up at her, then lowered them respectfully. “Efryn Boyne. At your service.”
She blushed. “So, Mr. Efryn Boyne. Why don’t you buy me lunch and tell me all about yourself, and your friend?” She nodded at Cochran’s door.
“I’m starving,” he said.
“Me too!”
“What a coincidence.” He’d gladly play the straight man. “Whatever your problem, consider it gone.”
“Just like that?”
He nodded to the secretary, who seconded his nod, yelling feebly, “That’s Efryn Boyne.”
Angela looked him up and down. “Who?”
“A bite to eat, then?” he said, smiling broadly. Of course she’d never heard of him, she was a nice girl. He held his arm out, she took it, and they headed toward the stairs.
Boyne turned to the secretary. “Tell him I’ll be back.”
“Any message?”
He thought for a second then said laughingly, “Banshees.”
The secretary shrugged her shoulders as the happy couple floated down the stairs.
“Banshees it is.”
31
A buzzing knot between her eyes woke Camille. She was still sitting on the kitchen stool, arms folded onto the cold marble top. Her elbows ached. Oh no! The buzz was coming from her computer. She glared at it, then flipped it open.
“Camille?” said MISH. “We have thousands and thousands of posts.”
Camille’s mouth drooped in mild shock. “Is that good?”
A list filled the screen. “Look at this.” The list scrolled in a blur, stopping at a post from [email protected] >No father info, been to that mountain. See attached.
MISH pulled up the photo. It was exactly as described in the love letters. Two cathedral spires rising out of a mountain of solid stone. The post was labeled: 40° lat 78° long. “Just like the letters said. Thank her and rank her?”
“Yeah, let’s.” Camille’s digital dashboard came on screen with a row of emerald green buttons numbered one through five. She looked to MISH. “What now?”
“You rank posts on a scale of usefulness. Five would be extremely useful, a one, almost useless.”
“What if it’s totally useless?”
“Then you say nothing. What’s the point?”
“True,” mumbled Camille.
“The Massive tracks everything, gives you real-time feedback: charts, graphs, lists, trend and timelines, that sort of thing. Tools to help you figure out what the data means. It’s worthless if you can’t find its meaning.”
“So what do I do with this one? The photo of the mountain.”
“Give it a rank.”
“Three - fourish?”
“Information this specific is top level. Go five.”
“Make it so.”
“Hit Emerald Button number Five.”
Camille tapped it, then selected a random post from: [email protected] >Arthur Gager Autopsy Report, med. files, NPF Barracks, in geo vector 2spires.”
The NPF? MacIan’s back! Camille chased him from her head. She was on a mission. And there was progress. Incredible progress. She clicked the attachment and there was Otis’s autopsy report: Cause of Death, fall from great height. Broken . . . That’s enough. But her eyes were drawn to the scribbled signature of the NPF Office
r In Charge: Tpr. MacIan. Like it or not, they were linked.
A new post popped up from [email protected] >Served with MacIan. I O him my life. See debriefing video attached.
Camille smiled. A moment’s guilty pleasure, a gentle thought. So he is a hero. She clicked >MacIanDebriefing.mpg.
Otis marched into the hospital lobby toward Max, flanked by two anonymous women in powder-blue scrubs, a surgical mask dangling rakishly from one ear. They received each other like life-long friends, but Otis waved off a hug, pointing to his bloodied scrubs.
“Know why you’re here, sorry, sorry, sorry, but no news about your friend. She’s resting. In good hands. But she hasn’t been conscious since we stabilized her.”
“Is she going to be all right?”
“Signs are good.”
One of the women nodded toward the operating room. Otis shrugged his shoulders. “I got nothing for ya, not right now, Max.”
“Are you OK?” said Max.
“I’m fine. Don’t have a minute to myself. Feels great. Stop back later.”
As Otis headed off, a horrible outcry caught Molly’s smoldering attention. She rotated her head like a tank gunner. “No, no, no,” she grumbled, shoving past Max.
He watched her storm off with clenched fists toward the clipboard lady, who was berating a tearful girl in a tattered white wool coat. He skittered through the crowd after Molly as she closed in on the hapless clipboard lady.
“Hey! Gate-keeper-witch!”
The clipboard lady swung around. The tattered girl slumped against the wall and slid to the floor.
“Better watch what you say!” sneered the clipboard lady, eyes flaming.
“Or what!?” screamed Molly, so loud the whole lobby fell silent.
Max cringed.
The girl, so thin it was hard to tell her age, covered her head with two starved limbs and passed out at the clipboard lady’s feet.
The clipboard lady was about to spew, but the sudden silence stunned her. She lowered her clipboard and eyed the crowd, which slowly shuffled back to minding its own business, except for a few appropriately dressed men who stood in a far too forthright stance for her liking. The Watchers, she knew, were here to keep the peace and watch out for the children who lived in the Brewery, particularly Molly. She could save face if she said the right thing.
