Cyber Sparks

by Robert Appleton

  “He’s not omnied in anywhere?”

  “He’s not answering, if he is. Where are you, Allie?”

  “Eastside subway, heading back for the wheel.”

  “Yo, Allie.” Phyllis’s full-body 3D avatar popped onto the screen dancing a hilarious flamenco number. “We’re done waiting for Reg. Wanna meet us someplace else? Rink suggests her lingerie shop—”

  “Heeey, no I didn’t.” Rinko’s name appeared in a fluorescent pink font. “Don’t listen to her, Allie. She’s just sore ’cause I don’t stock anything in her cup size—A minus.”

  “Better than having two planets for an ass, Rink. Ha! Rink! Could skate all day on that icy rump.”

  “Kiss it first, coat hanger. I’d—”

  Lenore banished the bickering twosome from the conversation with a beep of her pod. “That’s enough of that. So where do you want to meet, Allie? The Bluebird Cafe?”

  “Sure, sounds good. Nice and out-of-the-way.”

  “Yup. I’ll go in disguise and get us an omni booth for four downstairs, one with a high-power terminal.”

  “Blow my mind, huh?”

  “And then some, sweetie. Don’t be long.”

  “You got it.”

  I cut the podnet link and began cycling through the personal profiling database, something I’d not tried before.

  Disguise.

  One of the most popular features of omniying, Custom Imaging Projection enabled the user to alter her appearance for all other omniyers. An array of tiny digital projectors on the headset’s frame created a 3D holographic facial image so real you had to get very close before you could see the joins in the digital mapping. The more sensors you wore on your clothing—the Omni catalogue boasted thousands of fashion items for this purpose alone—the more completely you could render the transformation. And the more clips you spent, the more reality you bought.

  For instance, Phyllis wore Omni tights, Omni high heels, an Omni blouse and an Omni bangle for her ponytail. These were all embedded with sensors, so her headset could map and project an entire virtual body image, tailored in every way to her design. Thus, her narrow ass and hips were now shapely and luscious, her bee-sting breasts gave Lenore’s and my Ds a run for their money, while her face and hair, actually cute enough beforehand, became as wild and exotic as she desired. I’d always thought Lenore’s nickname for Phyllis’s Omni alter-ego—Jessica Rabbit—had to be an exaggeration. Boy, was I wrong. She could own Toon Town with one wiggle of her…bits.

  Rinko, on the other hand, tended to stay fairly conservative. Projection could slim you to any figure you wanted with its wraparound digi-field, but your bordering was never quite in sync with the improvised background. It was simpler and less expensive to keep your basic body shape and let the profiling enhance you, make you sexier with its bells and whistles. Rinko kept her curves, and while she created long, elegant digi-skirts, she didn’t project her tops at all, instead wore low-cut numbers that emphasized her natural cleavage.

  That was the thing with omniying—you got to decide everything. How you looked, smelled, the tenor of your voice, your song that played for anyone passing by. You could fabricate it all and revel in the fabrications of others, or you could opt to see people without enhancements and let them see the real you. Most of the time, omniying was somewhere in between.

  On my way to the Bluebird, I passed a Disney Snow White complete with twittering birds on her shoulder, a bronzed Heracles with ginormous muscles and a loincloth so small you had to look twice to make sure it was there, an almost-invisible man who chased giggling girls, and my personal favorite, a digital Tandy Semprica with a knife through her neck and bullet holes all over her body.

  It was Halloween every day for an omniyer.

  I picked a straightforward disguise for my first attempt—a pretty but moody lady pirate sporting a headscarf and thick eyeliner. I didn’t have any Omni couture, so it was really just the head. But in trying to access the voice options, I accidentally said the word catalog instead of category, and the whole of D.C. morphed in front of me.

  Holy crap.

  The shops, towers blocks, billboards and passers-by all switched into a kind of captioned panoramic diagram with info on everything. A three-dimensional living catalogue writ large and in-your-face. Whichever way I looked, my visor’s crosshairs highlighted something available for purchase. What someone was wearing, how much it cost, what size I required. I could choose between architectural view—everything from shop window styles to the concrete under my feet was available for order—fashion view, shop-specific view for help when browsing in store, and general consumer view.

  “Catalog off!”

  Any more of that and I’d get a freaking headache. I took the commuter wheel so I could chill out for a bit, and watched a lunar sitcom on my pod that wasn’t half bad.

  When I entered the Bluebird Cafe, Phyllis and Rinko were busy tearing strips off the cafe manager, who seemed to be giving as good as she got. Lenore hung back, as she always did, her evil Maleficent face so ironic I had to laugh. I recognized it was her from her to-die-for figure no tech could best.

  “No one gets credit-blocked without prior notice,” Phyllis yelled, her Jessica Rabbit curves almost popping out of a skimpy floral summer dress. “And you’re saying all three of us have been flagged? What kind of shit is that?”

  “I’ll ask you to keep your voice down, or else I’m calling security.” The gangly manager shifted her weight to a taut stance, folded her arms. “Unless you’ve brought credits with you, there’s nothing I can do.”

  Rinko stepped forward, glared up at the lanky woman. “Does it not strike you as odd that three of your regulars have been flagged together? Come on, it has to be a glitch in your system. Try again.”

  “Listen, I’ve tried six times and it’s not washed. No one else has had a problem paying today. As for you being regulars, I’ve never seen you before.”

  “You what?” Phyllis almost exploded. “We’ve come in here nearly every week for the past two years and you say we’re not regulars. Bitch.”

  “Yeah, right—like I can tell. Maybe if you wore the same face, or better yet, didn’t pretend you were someone else every time you went out, people might be able to remember you.”

  Jesus, she’s got a point. But these were my friends she was ripping into—I couldn’t stand for that. I glanced around the cafe. Only one or two customers, those without omnipods, seemed to even know there was a fracas. The rest gibbered away into their masks between sips of juice and milkshake.

  “Okay, that’ll do.” I strode up to the manager. “Here, give me that thing before I strangle you with it.” I snatched the scanner from her hand and held it over the pterosaur tattoo on my wrist. The nano-ink read the total for four McCormick’s as ninety-three credits. I turned away and pressed my fingertips in coded sequence on the tattoo to authorize payment. As soon as I’d finished, the ink morphed into a red blotch, signifying my credit was being withheld. I tried twice more. Same result.

  “Another one. I’d suggest it’s either a dangerous practical joke or someone is keeping tabs on the four of you, someone high up. Either way, there’s nothing I can do.” The manager brushed past me and turned on her smile for another couple who’d just entered.

  “No need to guess who’s behind it.” Lenore poked my arm. “What should we do?”

  “We’ll swing by my store,” Rinko said, “pick up some clips from the safe.” She marched out of the cafe and left us gobsmacked. It was the first time she’d ever suggested we visit her lingerie shop, and her words crackled with defiance.

  Outside, Lenore opened a private channel and gently held my hand. No omni lies this time—the spicy buttery sensation spread everywhere from my fingertips. “All right, Allie, what’s going on here? This is really starting to weird me out.”

 
I had to do a double take to make sure she wasn’t referring to our…partially ignited relationship. “Um, yeah, me too.”

  “First Reggie’s, then Oleander’s, now the Bluebird—that’s three closed doors in a row, right on cue, during peak shopping. Some coincidence.”

  She had a point. “And all four of our accounts corked like that,” I said. “It sure as hell isn’t Tandy pulling those kinds of strings. Bitch would have to be omnipotent.”

  “Scary thought, huh. Allie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Stay close. I’ve had this feeling for a couple of days now. Almost like I’m being…followed. Not by anyone who’s really there, it’s…just the eyes, you know?”

  “Just the eyes.”

  “They’re watching us right now.”

  I glanced around but she tugged my arm. “No,” she whispered. “There’s no one there. It’s like that feeling you get when you’re being stared at and you turn round to see who it is—like you’ve just done—only by the time you’ve turned round the eyes are watching you from the opposite direction. They’re always just out of sight, out of scrutiny.”

  “Um, Lenore, I think they call that being paranoid.”

  She let go of my hand. “Whatever.” She strode after the others instead.

  Note to self: when the girl of your dreams is confiding in you, don’t talk to her through bullet-proof glass.

  “Hey, Lenore, I’m sorry. Wait up. Hey, I wasn’t listening properly.” Like that didn’t make it even worse. “You wanna run that by me again?”

  No response. The three of them were busy making riled hand gestures at the world, jabbering away, a triumvirate of omni veterans ready to pop in frustration. How dare their license to shop be torn away for an afternoon. Why, interstellar wars had been fought for less.

  I hung back several feet, trying to figure a possible link between the series of events that had left us wandering around the northeast market circle without a clip to our names. Nothing came to mind. They were random occurrences, that was all, as happens to shit-upon souls from time to time when they take the world for granted.

  But all four of us being flagged at the same time?

  I halted as we passed a flower shop window. In the central display, an Ireton Flute seemed to gaze up at me, its core buds opening inside a ring of shiny petals. Its long, thin stem appeared marbled, almost glassy, like the champagne flute it was named after. The most prized flower on my home world. I hadn’t seen one since Mum had flown me across Magma Canyon to the arboretum’s annual botany exhibition. That was a few weeks before I’d left for the Selene pageant and my date with destiny. It was also my last outing with Mum.

  But damn it, the omnipod had got the colors all wrong. These buds should be bright orange, not cold green; the petals yellow and brown, not turquoise and purple. My temples began to itch, then to ache. The more I perceived the incongruity, the more my throat constricted and I had to gasp to suck in enough air. For chrissakes, I had to see something from my home world in its natural beauty or I’d explode. D.C. was slowly but surely strangling the life out of me. I needed this.

  “Fucking thing.” I yanked the omnipod off and let it hang by its strap in front of me. Palms and forehead pressed against the window, I gazed and gazed at the brilliance of those tiny, bright orange buds so desperate to bloom but unable to fully open in this completely artificial environment.

  My omnipod buzzed and flashed but I kept company with real life instead. Without that fake neural filter, I easily conjured the brisk thermal winds of home, the pulpy smell of summer as the cloven galad trees sprayed their spores high into the sky, the caws of rolling greenarrow geese sounding in every direction. The Faraday Isles of Ireton Four—I could practically feel the balm, taste the—

  A flash in the corner of my eye startled me, spun me toward the north edge of the market circle. Bursts of bright yellow flame shot high over the shops, almost reaching the commuter spoke hundreds of feet up. After several shots, a column of yellow fire blazed from a hole in the ground. Its girth quickly spread, enough to hide half a row of shops. Awful black smoke rose to the northeast, blanketing the nearest static spoke—the commuter wheel must have automatically shut down.

  “Lenore!”

  Though she was nowhere near the flame, I couldn’t believe what was happening. All across the market circle, rather than fleeing the disaster, people were racing hell for leather directly into the fire. Not everyone but the vast majority—hundreds of them—were throwing themselves to their deaths.

  “Lenore!” I spotted her a hundred yards ahead. She was going to be one of the suicides!

  Oh my God, no. Lenore!

  Mid-run, her high heel snapped and she spilled onto the asphalt. A couple trampled her. I kicked my shoes off and sprinted through endless streams of death-hungry shoppers, barging some aside, clawing at others to let me past. Men and women, boys and girls: they had nothing in common except they were all omniyers…and all insane.

  Rinko and Phyllis were already out of sight, lost to the rushing crowd by the time I reached Lenore. Every quark of energy inside her seemed bent on sacrificing herself to the fire but I refused to let go. She kicked and writhed, so I had to pull her headset off and crack her on the jaw. Lights out. Against the ever-growing suicidal surge, I dragged her to the relative safety of a travel agent’s outdoor sales booth. The travel agent had already taken an impromptu trip to the new hot spot.

  Screams and cries for help erupted all across D.C. Those drawn to their deaths made no sound as they left friends and relatives without warning. Moths to the flame. Dozens of commuters escaped from the wheel spoke and hurled themselves off its roof into the yellow pyre below. Shopkeepers, schoolchildren and their teachers, disabled people, handymen and millionaires alike, all shapes and sizes, all creeds—it was an apocalyptic flicking of the switch on humankind. The one that had overseen a million generations of their ancestors’ Darwinian survival had suddenly, inexplicably, flipped on the citizens of Washington, D.C.

  I’d never regretted being awake to reality as much as when I held Lenore unconscious in my arms that day. Nor had I ever thanked God for that same reality. For if I hadn’t taken my omnipod off to look at the Ireton Flute, I might have jumped into the inferno as willingly as Rinko and Phyllis and all the others.

  By the time the police arrived to safely barricade the fire, almost nine-hundred omniyers had burned on the pyre. EMS bots logged the names of all witnesses and administered basic first aid and preliminary shock meds, while professional medical crews took care of the more serious cases. I refused to let them take Lenore from me in case she made another run for the fire, so an EMS bot performed a few standard neurological tests on her in the travel agent’s booth. It soon diagnosed her fit to be taken home, with the caveat that she visit Obama Memorial Hospital within seventy-two hours for a full check-up.

  “Was Miss Reichert using an omnipod at the time?” the bot asked me, retracting its stabilizers, ready to roll away.

  “Yes. They all were.”

  “Thank you, Miss Mondebay. Our investigators may ask you to make a statement within the next seventy-two hours. Will you be leaving the city during that time?”

  “No, I’ll be staying with my friend.”

  “Thank you. Good day, Miss Mondebay. If you require further assistance, please don’t hesitate to call EMS.”

  “Okay, yeah.” When the bot had gone, I lifted Lenore’s pod, ready to smash it into smithereens, but set it down instead. It was evidence. Somewhere inside, an infinitesimal short circuit the brightest tech minds on Earth had failed to predict had just brought down the Omni Corporation. Or at the very least, there’d be one hell of a recall.

  Lenore came to a few minutes after the EMS bot left. She gave one-word answers and didn’t remember anything about the experience. The fire still burned to a height of a
bout twenty feet but the police had erected a riot shield that masked the horrific sight. Nothing, though, could hide the sickening smell of cooked flesh.

  When I told her what had happened to Phyllis and Rinko, she didn’t say a word for several minutes, then insisted on walking all the way across town to my apartment. The idea of being at the mercy of a machine—any machine, piloted or not—frightened her, she admitted.

  No fucking kidding.

  Back home, I tucked Lenore into my bed and went to make her a cup of hot McCormick’s. Someone had left a message on my holo-phone, audio only. As I played it, the day that couldn’t possibly have gotten any worse clattered down about my ears.

  “Allegra, are you convinced yet? Or do you require further demonstrations?”

  “Satto? Is that…was that you?”

  But it was only a message and I wasn’t omnied in, so we couldn’t converse. Reluctantly, I attached my headset and, with an exhausted sigh, switched the bastard on for what I hoped would be the last time.

  “I have already told you all I am willing to divulge until we meet face-to-face.” No emotion whatsoever informed Satto’s words. He’d made his mind up and that was that.

  “God help you if you were responsible for this, you son of a bitch.”

  “The omniyers were responsible for this. They ignored all the warnings and paid the price. But don’t take my word for it, Allegra. Here is a live conversation taking place in the office of the president of Omni as we speak, which no one else is privy to—only you and I.”

  “What do you mean live? How can you—”

  Before I could finish, an unmistakable hoarse voice crackled through my omnipod. It belonged to Johnny Farrough, eighty-odd-year-old president of Omni—I recognized it instantly—and somehow, Satto had managed to bug his office, to listen in on this conversation with Marks, his wily head of public relations.

  My head swarmed with a million questions but I silenced them immediately for the chance to listen in on this exclusive confab.