“Move, move, move,” Smoke says, a cross between Sky and an old‐time TV SWAT‐team leader.
They move on till they come to what was once a public concourse.
•
“Yo, Citizen.”
Cisco drops into a crouch, freezes.
“Cisco Smith ZEZQ112.”
He can't get a fix on the voice. It's coming from everywhere at once.
“My man.” An oily wheedling inside his head. A dreckad has him in its sights.
Cisco leans back and looks up to where stacks of galleries, pre‐lockdown arcades of shops still gaudy with colored lights, soar into the dim recesses above. A gigantic media ball faceted with a thousand screens, all of them blank, hangs high above him in the center of the corridor intersection. A few screens begin sputtering light even as Cisco looks. As if to welcome him. When did you last look at yourself?
“Bugger off,” he says. But it's futile.
I mean, look at yourself. It's makeover time!
People used to put up with this.
Let NuEu show you who you want to be. Come see us now; check out our special sale prices for Smiths. Level Three East. Hurry!
Level Three East is clearly marked, shops still advertising their respective goods and services. NuEu, BioMod, EuGeniTrends, MakeOver Magic…
“Hurry!” Smoke is at the next bafflegate. “Move.”
Cisco moves. At the same time, he's overwhelmed by memories. All the old standards are up there, shops from some time barely recollected. ModBod, MorphoLot, BioLogic. BioLogic, formerly known as Protean. Cisco recalls their slogan: “Permanent revolution—the ultimate adventure.” At the same moment the dreckad hits him with the most annoying jingle ever devised. Just too, too bored with yourself? He recalls that Protean/BioLogic got shut down in a series of lawsuits. Yet here they are, still advertising ongoing personal modification, largely random, triggered at the molecular level by the customer's own cellular processes. Another voice, female and sultry, has started up in his head: Surface change is cheap and easy. But you aren't superficial. Are you? Let's go all the way—come see me at BioMod, Level Three East. There's more. After so many customerless cycles, a clamor of hungry ghosts demand his attention.
Smoke is moving fast, uttering passcodes so quickly they're unintelligible to Cisco. “Hurry!” she tells him. “Come.”
Meanwhile the dreckads are also coming more quickly.
How's your family, Citizen ZEZQ112? Look! Look up here
. Cisco looks up to see a massive sign high on the gallery: “Acme Loss Insurance:
Let Us ..ck Up Your Loved Ones.
It means to say “Back Up Your Loved Ones.” Even as Cisco notices the sign, a new voice yammers at him:
How are you gonna feel when she's gone? The one you love. Dead. And you with no spare. Nobody but yourself to blame.
These corridors have stood vacant since lockdown, since before “families” and “women you love” became anachronisms, yet the dreckad triggers still function. More letters disappear even as he reads the sign.
The insurance agent croaks and dies. The other voices are also going silent. Cisco breaks into a sprint to keep up with Smoke. Then he stops. A forty‐ton media ball is dropping from high above. It explodes on the floor thirty meters ahead. Where's the field matrix? Seconds later, shards of screen and mirror frizzle and flash up against the force‐field baffle less than a meter from where Cisco stands; this part of the matrix, at least, still works.
Smoke delivers the entry code for the next cell and tells Cisco, “Move.”
An all‐but‐subliminal chittering serves little notice before the entire stack of arcades collapses, level upon level. Whump, whump, whump. The supporting wall and a row of flitter stations underneath first blur and then disintegrate as the whole lot comes down in great clouds of dust lit by shafts of sunlight that invade these spaces for the first time ever.
Cisco feels the sun on his face.
•
This is a real breach. Eddie Eight's promised end of the world. The whole mall is going down.
“This way, this way.” Smoke, a fleet silver shadow, moves east. For lack of any obvious alternative, Cisco follows. But how can Smoke know what she's doing?
“Sky?” says Cisco, on a sudden hunch. At the same time he's pretty sure, now, that this whole thing is more than a lovers' rendezvous gone bad.
“Not too close.” Smoke sounds breathless, even though she's a machine and doesn't breathe. “Keep behind me.'
Cisco looks back the way they've come, a quick check, but there's no sign of their mysterious pursuer. The way things are going, he hasn't had time to worry much about the blurs, bio‐viruses, radiation, chemical poisoning, or anything else. He is worried, of course, but not as much as he thinks he should be.
“Ex, ex, ex; two, two, two; vee, vee, vee,” the pet intones, slowly enough that Cisco understands, underlying the gravity of this stage in their exit. “Twenty‐five… Okay, jump.”
Cisco hits the deck rolling. He's on his feet again as a gray tsunami breaks against their force‐field cell, a lacy shell of matter transformed into crackling blue‐and‐gold energy. Momentarily, this flamboyant display limns the remnant cells of the field matrix. Then the power to the baffle shuts off as well, and all that remains is dust and sunlight.
He's on a shiny‐smooth RokBot platform open to a panoramic view of Outside. It's so cold that his breath condenses in clouds to stream away in the breeze. He can smell things, unidentifiable things that nevertheless stir deep memories.
Smoke is standing beside a piece of equipment. “Get in,” she says. “Yes. Get in, get in, get in.”
The sky is mostly blue. Some fluffy white clouds are moving from north to south. He checks to see that he still has his locket. He has, and the woman is scowling. Behind them the entire mall is disintegrating.
“Get in.”
Outside
Leary hasn't been outside his apartment in more cycles than he can remember.
He stands there in the corridor, braced. He winces. He's conscious of this wincing, and it annoys him. He tries to relax. “That's frig all,” he says. Then he says it louder: “That's frig all.” He opens his eyes and looks around. Surprised to find himself still alive, pessimistic about sustaining that condition for long. “Gosh,” he says. “If I was a betting man, Rexy, I'd have given you even money we'd already be dead and gone.”
But if Hell has boiled over, it was some time ago. There's no evidence of recent nuclear shock waves or tsunamis. And Leary hasn't been dissed. At least not yet. Bad things have happened here, but the main impression is one of abandonment. The door to Leary's apartment, seamlessly part of the corridor wall, is identical to any other part of that wall except for the dim glow of a number, flush with the foglet substratum. This was his home for hundreds of cycles. And now he's leaving. “Say goodbye, Rexy. I guess this is the last we'll ever see of good old GXG222 11.” One way or the other, whether they wind up dead or alive.
“First order of business,” Leary says, “let's figure out how much elbow room we've got here in this first cell.”
Rexy doesn't reply. In fact he hasn't spoken since the door code incident, and Leary almost wonders whether he didn't imagine the whole thing. But Rexy, all bulked up with saddlebags full of water bottles, is clearly anxious to be on the road. A real red setter would be sniffing and peeing everywhere, getting a fix on his own doggy matrix of territorial claims and limits. But Rexy starts to trot northward along the wall.
“Hold on there, boy!” Leary says. “Let's take this step by step.” Leary works up a good mouthful of saliva and spits as far as he's able. He spits to the south. Nothing. He spits to the east, and he spits to the north. Nothing and nothing again. No flash. No evidence of any live force‐field barrier. He advances a few steps towards the north and spits again. Nothing. Running out of spit, he advances farther, opens his suit, and pees. He flings the piss‐stream to its maximum range. Still nothing. The field matrix
is down. The Titanic, back around the start of the last century, had watertight compartments designed to make it unsinkable. That turned out to be the most famous unsinkable sunken ship in history. “That's right, Rexy. Just like ESUSA is the most unbreachable mall in the world.” What level of security services has he been getting, in fact, and how long has the mall been this exposed?
But Leary does relax a little. He starts to look around more carefully.
•
As they make their way north, the corridor leads to what was once a public concourse, a social node lined with galleries of shops from floor to a ceiling so high that, back in the old days, clouds used to form. Parts of these areas never had baffle matrixes, so the mallsters sometimes had to carry umbrellas when they went shopping.
“So Rexy, what do you think?” Leary says. “Where's the Kid? Any idea where we're supposed to meet him?” But Rexy is like the dog in all the old talking dog jokes, dead mute whenever you really want him to speak.
“Yo!” Leary bellows. “Hey, Kid!”
Leary is struck with how unlikely it is, standing here. Especially standing here alive. “Sometimes, Rexy, I get this feeling I'm being saved for something. I can't imagine what that would be. Aside from this small matter of saving the world.”
Leary's sudden boom of laughter is swallowed up in the vast recesses. Dust slides off a gallery on the level above them, spilling like a silken waterfall to splash to the floor around seventy‐five meters away. This startles Leary. “I don't know if you can see me now, Brian,” he calls out, “or whether you can hear me. But get this. If I go now, so does Ellie. You hear me, Brian? Same thing if anything happens to the Kid.” Chances are Brian can't hear him even if he does have the place tapped. Leary winds himself up for another bellow, and all he manages is a whisper. It dissipates in this cavernous space, doesn't even echo.
Then there's another voice.
Citizen Leary GXG222 11. Guess what we have for you!
“Gosh‐darn it.”
Are you everything you could be?
“Frig off.” Leary's heart is pounding in a way hundred‐and‐thirteen‐year‐old hearts should never pound. He hasn't been hit with a dreckad for more years than he can remember. A direct ad. The malls had no use for them anyway, once the Dolls arrived on the scene. But that had been after lockdown. And here the ads were, still lying in wait. Mindlessly doing their part to keep the wheels of industry turning, never mind there were no wheels of industry and there hadn't been in some time.
Citizen Leary GXG222 11. Have you tried our new, improved Worlds cradle? Ninety‐nine percent more comfortable. And claustrophobia‐proof, too!
Leary is caught in a crossfire. ModBods are firing blandishments from one side while Worlds UnLtd tout the latest in cradles from the other, though this is old stuff, from way back before the force‐field suspension cradles. Leary ducks at a sudden rattle. Like small‐arms fire or strings of firecrackers. In fact it's an ad for Armageddon Popcorn. That's something he'd forgotten, this great popcorn, better than anything the Doll ever came up with. Fine hellzapoppin fun. The dreckad has him solidly in its sights.
Leary notes the hint of a phobic response to the dust. This is nothing like what he'd expected to find. The last time he stood in this corridor, it was immaculate. Sterile. Now it's dull with dust. Unrelievedly gray, unbelievably fine. The slightest breeze, just Leary's passing, sets it in motion, where it isn't loosely clumped like giant dust bunnies, as with static electricity, in a giant checkerboard pattern, probably a vestige of the baffle cells. It isn't clear how much of this is blur dust and how much is only everyday house dust. All the stuff—even the slowjoes and “watch out, the blurs will diss you before you can say boo”—it looks as though that was mostly malarkey. A con.
You can see evidence of massive breaching everywhere, yet the basic mall structure remains. As though the PlagueBot had been distracted, maybe subjected to a curfew in mid‐mayhem. Foglet patches on old breaches are revealed in the ambient light from hidden glowevers. Some of them soar a hundred meters, ten galleries high, shining featureless and utilitarian, nothing like the textured matte finish of the original structure.
There's no evidence of recent PlagueBot invasion, no serious attacks at least. Only blotches of semi‐cohesive blur like lethal ghosts, spots of blur infection that present potential ambushes on every side. But who, or what, had been protecting him and his apartment all this time? And how is it that he isn't being dissed right where he stands now?
But here's the real question: who, or what, would want him to believe that Outside was more dangerous than it was in fact? The hair is standing up on Leary's neck, and he thinks how vulnerable he must have been, for how long he has no way of knowing. For how many cycles has he been open to invasion from Outside? Mind you, now he can't even say with any certainty what threats might lurk out there. It looks like a whole new ballgame. Then a voice rises from floor level.
“Greetings.”
•
“Hel‐lo‐oh. Anybody home?” A gruff voice, tinged with irony. The owner of the voice emerges from the dark and waddles straight up to Leary. “Cat got your tongue?”
Rexy moves between them and gives this apparition the once‐over, but he refrains from any doggy rituals of greeting.
It's an Aibo. A badly dented, much patched approximation to a dog. A Japanese pet robot, one of the first mechanical robots, maybe the first, to enjoy brief popularity back at the turn of the century. But this specimen must be as old as some first owner, no doubt already long dead and recycled. It makes knocking motions with a forepaw and growls again: “Anybody home?” A tinny sort of growl.
“Darn it,” Leary says.
“The name is Muggs,” it tells Leary, and it lists to the side.
“What?”
“Muggs.” The 'pet sounds irritated. “My name is Muggs.”
“Where the heck did you come from?”
“No time for that now. Let's get this show on the road.” Stiff‐legged, Muggs steps around till he's facing north and says, “Follow me.”
•
Leary follows Muggs, but that doesn't mean he's happy on that account. “This is really Brian I'm talking to, right?”
“Brian who? What are you talking about? My name is Muggs.”
“Right. So tell me this: why should I trust myself to you?”
“And your options are what?”
Leary strides ahead to where he can bend down and stare Muggs right in the eyes. “Darn it, Brian,” he says. “I know you're in there.”
“Stand aside,” says Muggs. “The sooner we're out of here, the sooner we'll be safe.”
Leary mutters as he trudges along trying to look in all directions at once, trying to stay alert both to dangers he can imagine and to those he can't. “It's bad enough we've handed the reins to MOM. But gosh, Rexy. I never thought I'd see the day when we'd have 'pets calling the shots. That was one thing, you knowing the code and whatnot. You were right, after all. But here we are, traipsing along after this department store toy out of the dark ages straight into the jaws of gosh‐knows what.”
Muggs struts along at speed, his stubby legs a blur. “Does that mutt ever answer you?” he asks.
“When did Aibos learn to talk? I mean actually talk? And how is it you can get around so fast?”
“Upgrades, my friend. Constant upgrades. And careful maintenance. They built me in 2005, and I'm basically the same Aibo I always was, though you could say I've evolved over the years.”
“I suppose you could say the same about me,” Leary replies. “Near enough, anyway, what with all the routine upgrade and replacement going on, medibots everywhere. What do you think, Rexy? If you change all the parts, is the whole thing the same or new? Mind you, I've still got the original brain, what's left of it, and most of the other organs too.”
Muggs pays no attention. He scoots up to the next junction to peer around the corner.
Not expecting any answer, Leary whispers at Rexy:
“There's still no sign of the Kid. Gosh. I hope he's okay.”
Surprise, surprise. Rexy responds, so softly that Leary has to bend near and ask him to repeat it. “Change of plan,” he says. “We'll meet Cisco elsewhere.”
“What? Where?”
“Data unavailable.”
“Heck, Rexy, you sound just like the Lode. Maybe I like you better when you don't talk.”
With no further incident, Leary and his entourage of 'pets descend three levels, move east for a while, and then proceed north again until, far away to the north, bright light spills from an eastward corridor, like a beacon. “If I didn't know better, Rexy old boy, I'd say that was daylight.”
They turn the corner, and Leary stops. Clouds of dust begin to materialize. So fine as to be invisible, the bots rise on a breeze, grow ever denser as they coalesce, assuming vague forms, vaguely menacing, and waft towards Leary. He braces himself for excruciating pain, a pitifully quick end to his plans to save the world.
Then they're Outside.
Outside
The salt air is a psychic bomb. Face to the morning sun, Leary inhales a flood of memories, surprised at both hints of decaying organic matter and the fact he hasn't been dissed yet. But Muggs says there's no problem, and it seems he's right. Though he's performing mysterious rituals to help make it so.
To the south, tiny at this distance, farther than the standard view from his window, what's left of the MahaNakhon building, what had been the tallest building in Thailand, breaks the otherwise featureless gray roll of sea. Leary believes he can see its long shadow in the early light. It's odd, these vestiges of times past, when humans still had the run of the place. Strange the way a few things have resisted the PlagueBot, as though a bunch of piss artists with the munchies had left pizza crusts lying around. If it hadn't been dissed, Boon Doc's bar, the real one, would lie somewhere beneath the waves on a line a kilometer farther away on a bearing ninety degrees from the shadow.
MOM Page 12
