The Boost

by Stephen Baker

  Ralf asks if the Mexicans have machinery to download and read the chips.

  “Nobody knows,” Simon says. “But I doubt it.”

  “The guy you’re trying to get in touch with, he’s a friend of yours?”

  “A friend of a friend, sort of.”

  “How are we going to get the boost from him?”

  “Probably bribe him,” Simon says, walking into the bathroom. “If we’re lucky.” He shuts the door.

  Even after talking into the early morning hours, Ralf’s brother remains largely a mystery to him. Ralf has little idea, for example, how Simon makes a living by running the empty Cavalry Club. When he asked him about it, Simon answered cryptically, saying something about “alternate revenue streams.” Then late in the evening, when Ralf revealed his discovery of the open Chinese gate, 318 Blue, in the software update, Simon nodded and said, “I know.”

  “You know about 318 Blue?”

  “Well, the name is new to me,” Simon admitted.

  When Ralf pressed him on what he knew about the chip update, and how he learned about it, Simon skirted the question. “Ralf,” he said, reprising his old role as the know-it-all brother, “not everything about the chip runs through the chip—or the ‘boost,’ if you insist on calling it that.”

  Ralf shook his head, puzzled.

  “What I mean is that if you want to learn about the chip, you have to do your thinking off of it. Because the people who control it also control the information about it. It’s a walled garden. Using the chip to learn about the chip,” he added, “is like trying to chew your own teeth.”

  “Oh, I see,” Ralf said angrily. “It’s a conspiracy.” He assumed that this evil cabal, as his brother saw it, was enabled by a crew of talented but incurious technicians, including himself.

  “Call it what you will,” said Simon. He pointed to the bandage peeling off Ralf’s temple. “I don’t think that hole in your head came from a random act.”

  Ralf argued that Simon was confusing two issues. One was the effort in the update to eavesdrop on an entire nation’s cognitive processes through Gate 318 Blue. But that did not necessarily mean that people who “controlled” the chips created an alternate version of events, or even that they could. “Do you think they have people putting together phony stories that all of us accept as gospel?” he asked.

  “Not all of us accept them.” Simon sniffed.

  It had been three years since Ralf had last seen Simon, and exactly the same amount of time, he realized, since he had wanted to punch someone square in the face. Simon was two feet away, leaning against the kitchen counter. Instead of punching him, Ralf launched a verbal attack. He asked him, point blank, if he lived out his sex life in the boost.

  “I do,” Simon said calmly. “I have gay sex in a few worlds. In another one, I’m a straight woman named Simone.”

  “Is that as false as the news in the boost?”

  “It is.”

  “So you tell me to get off the boost, but you carry out your entire emotional life on it.”

  “Not my entire emotional life,” Simon quibbled. “My sex life. Look,” he added. “I’m not holding myself up as a model. Virtual sex is shallow. You could call it a lie. It’s probably not as fulfilling. There’s no trace of love. But it’s easier and neater. They’ve given me a tool—forced it on me—and I use it occasionally. Guilty as charged.”

  “If they open that gate, they’ll be able to spy on your sex life,” Ralf said. He wanted Simon to appreciate the battle he was waging for privacy, and the sacrifice he had made.

  “True enough,” Simon answered. “But if people find out about the surveillance, maybe they’ll start to distrust the chip. That wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

  “And we’d all go back to do all of our thinking with this thing?” Ralf pointed in the direction of his wet brain. “I don’t think that will fly.”

  3/7/72 10:47 a.m. Mountain Standard Time

  Simon rushes out of the bathroom. “A message from Ellen,” he says. “Someone is following her in South El Paso. The guy from the bar last night.”

  “The bartender?” Ralf asks. He pictures Chui standing behind the bar, messaging with Ellen.

  “No, a guy with a funny nose and a big brown KIFF.”

  Ralf’s heart races. “Should we head down there?”

  Simon doesn’t answer. He’s staring blankly, consulting his boost. “Oh my God,” he says.

  “What!”

  Simon snaps back from the boost. “She has to hide,” he says.

  Ralf waits for him to continue.

  Simon walks into the kitchenette and gulps another glass of water. “There was this incident a couple months ago,” he says, rinsing out the glass, “where this guy used some kind of a Chinese tool to zap a scientist they said was heading into Juárez. It was supposed to wipe his chip clean. It might have done that, but it also killed him.”

  “What’s this have to do with Ellen?”

  “There’s almost nothing about this story on the chip,” his brother says. “I remember hearing it from a friend.”

  “What’s your point?” Ralf is growing exasperated. Simon clearly still struggles to carry on a conversation when he’s dealing with his boost—just as he did as a child.

  “It’s just, like I was saying last night, if they don’t want you to find the story on the chip, it won’t be there.”

  “Or maybe it’s just that you can’t find it,” Ralf snaps. “What about the guy who killed the scientist? And what does it have to do with Ellen?”

  “Oh. I remember hearing about the guy who did it, or allegedly did it, and they said he had a boxer’s nose. It made me wonder if it’s the same guy who’s following you—or her.”

  “I remember him from the bar. What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You have his image in your chip. Run a match against a database.”

  “No can do, Mr. Chip.” Simon allows himself a smile, and Ralf, once again, feels a strong impulse to hit him.

  “Wait a minute,” Simon says, fetching new information. “She says she’s going down…” He waits a moment and looks back at Ralf. “Lost it.”

  “Holy God,” Ralf says.

  Simon resumes. “Down Kansas … No, no.” He’s talking to himself. “If she’s walking south and he’s in the KIFF, she should follow a one-way road going north, like South Campbell, unless maybe he’s south of her and coming back in her direction.…”

  “Tell her!”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Or you could just go shotgun,” Ralf says, wondering why the idea didn’t occur to him earlier. This way, Simon can climb into her boost, see through her eyes, and steer her toward safety.

  “I wouldn’t know how to start,” Simon says.

  When Simon first got his boost, at age twelve, it came with demonstration software. Using it, he had the sensation that he was walking into a different room. This was the boost chamber. He could shut the door and find himself facing a large touch screen. By controlling his thoughts he could form messages, enter virtual worlds, carry out calculations. The training room offered all kinds of safeguards. After Simon composed a message, a note would pop up asking if he really intended to send out this thought. Simon would click in his mind on Okay.

  The boost chamber was training wheels for the dry brain. It was an apprenticeship that his friends blew past in a matter of days, or even hours. For them, boost commands quickly became second nature. But Simon continued going into that virtual room, year after year, closing the door and following its explicit instructions. Well into his twenties, he found it comforting. Then one morning, following a national cognitive update, he awoke to discover that it was gone. Vanished. Once all of the new users were infants, authorities apparently concluded, no one needed an old training program from the ’40s. This was a rude shock for Simon, but he kept quiet about it. He was so embarrassed to still rely on training software that he never dared ask anyone—especially Ral
f—why it was gone.

  He looks up to see his brother talking to him. “You run your sex life in your boost and you don’t know how to run shotgun?”

  “When it comes to the chip, I pick and choose,” Simon says glumly. He then returns to his boost and instructs Ellen to walk south on Campbell, and to send him a stream of images. “I think she’s okay,” he says moments later, as the images start to arrive. “She’s walking east on Fourth, or maybe it’s Father Rahm…”

  “These names mean nothing to me,” Ralf says. In his three days in the wild, he has never felt so powerless.

  “Okay,” Simon says, “she’s turning right on Campbell, and … oh my God, the guy’s on foot, right across the street!”

  “Tell her!”

  3/7/72 10:50 a.m. Mountain Standard Time

  Ellen hurries down South Kansas Street, the package of blouses clenched in her right fist. She darts from the doorway of one store to the next, ready to take refuge if the big man with the nose appears. She’s sweating, but the dry desert heat promptly turns it into salt.

  She stops briefly and captures the image of the brick wall behind her. The dark bricks look old and worn, and probably date from the early twentieth century, or even before. Then she transmits the image to her wardrobe and calls for her leggings and shirt to switch to the same color pattern. The leggings transform immediately, camouflaging the lower half of her body with bricks. But the shirt she borrowed from Simon stubbornly retains its blue stripes. Ralf’s brother, she sees, buys old-fashioned, immutable clothing. She’s disappointed, but not surprised. Looking at her reflection in a shop window, she sees that the bricks clash with the striped shirt. She takes a flowered blouse from her bag and puts it on over Simon’s shirt. That’s better, she thinks, regarding herself. Not perfect, but Artemi don’t need to be.

  She is receiving only fragments of information from Simon. Single words come her way: “God, one-way, Kansas, scientist.” Then comes a map of South El Paso, with its grid of one-way streets. With her geotags flickering, this could prove useful. But she doesn’t see herself on a map. There’s no dot. She turns it off to look at the image that pops in. It’s Ralf sitting on the couch, looking uneasy. This is followed by more words about one-way streets. She hears Ralf’s voice for a moment, saying something about “the guy who killed the scientist.” Sounds like he’s frustrated with Simon, too. Ellen wishes she could turn Simon off. When it comes to the boost, he has the skill of a toddler.

  She gets the message to head south on Campbell. The wind picks up and blows her hair into her eyes. She holds it back with a free hand, thinking maybe she should stop and buy a hat. Simon asks for images, and she obediently sends him a stream. She reaches Campbell and takes a right. By her count, she’s four blocks north of the market when she hears Ralf’s voice yelling, “Tell her!”

  A moment later comes the message from Simon. “Duck into the shoe store!”

  Ellen pivots to her right and is hit by a blast of air-conditioning as she steps into Zapateria Ramon.

  3/7/72 10:18 a.m. Mountain Standard Time

  As Espinoza drains his coffee, his eyes on the magnificent Artemis in the boutique across the street, he picks up the scent of churros frying nearby. He sees the Artemis at the counter now, holding up flowered blouses. She looks his way, and he lowers his gaze.

  She doesn’t look anything like a desperado headed to Juárez, of all places. He almost feels like crossing the street, facing his quarry head on, and directing her north, to Cielo Vista Mall. That’s her kind of place, he tells himself. It’s the last brick-and-mortar mall in West Texas, a place where people actually walk from store to store and touch things. It’s a throwback, but that’s its charm. They even have a skating rink. Espinoza considers offering to drive her there in his KIFF—once he has eaten.

  She pays for the clothes and disappears into the back of the store. Espinoza waits. Then he pays for the coffee and crosses the street to the boutique and peers in the window. She’s gone.

  Espinoza is walking in the direction of the churro stand when a message from George Smedley pops up.

  “Well?”

  “Following her in South El Paso,” he responds.

  “Are you certain she’s the domed Artemis?”

  “Has hair.”

  “Likely to be a wig,” Smedley answers.

  “Could be,” Espinoza admits. He’s aware that Smedley has access to Vallinger’s tracking machine, which could tell him if the Artemis currently shopping in South El Paso is the one he’s looking for. “Why not confirm with a data track?” he asks.

  “Not in the office,” Smedley replies. Then he asks, “Coordinates?”

  “South El Paso Street and East Paisano Drive.”

  There’s a pause, and then Smedley messages: “That’s five hundred meters from the border!”

  “You’re telling me?”

  “Is she in sight?”

  Espinoza lies: “Across the street.”

  “Send image.”

  Espinoza pulls out an image from Ellen’s visit to the boutique and sends it.

  “That image was from a half hour ago,” a new message says. “Where is she now?”

  “Close by,” Espinoza fibs again.

  “Let me run shotgun.” The last thing Espinoza wants at this point is to run a surveillance and interdiction job with his boss inside his head.

  “I’m on top of it,” he responds. “There she goes. Gotta move.”

  Espinoza has to get her back in sight—as soon as he eats. He stops at the churro stand and is transfixed by sweet strips of dough frying in an inch of bubbling oil. He orders a half dozen. He watches avidly as the teenaged boy fishes them out with a metal spatula and sprinkles them with confectioner’s sugar. Espinoza tells him to add just a bit more sugar, and then asks, as casually as possible, if the young man has seen an Artemis lately. “She’s carrying a small bag,” he adds, helpfully.

  “Is she very beautiful?” the boy asks. Espinoza sees that he’s staring at his nose, which angers him.

  “Asking if an Artemis is beautiful is like asking if a dog has four legs,” he snaps.

  “Most do,” the boy notes as he strings more dough into the oil.

  “Do what?”

  “Most have four legs.”

  “Right. Have you seen the beautiful Artemis?”

  The boy points toward Kansas Street. “About five minutes ago,” he says. “If I see her,” he adds, “should I tell her you’re looking for her?”

  Espinoza takes off in the same direction without answering.

  Why is it, he wonders, as he eats his first churro, that the old-world flavors of the physical world still hold sway south of Paisano Avenue? Could it be that the dead zone stretches north from Juárez and numbs the boosts in South El Paso?

  A message pops in from Smedley: “Update please.”

  “Following. Nothing new,” he responds.

  “You’re carrying the new tool I sent?” Smedley is referring to an updated zapper that John Vallinger brought back from China. It features a modulated charge, which wipes the boost more gently and poses less risk of collateral damage. It could have saved a life on Espinoza’s last assignment.

  “Got it,” Espinoza responds. Technically, this is true. He received it, but he left it at home in his top bureau drawer. It had a plastic molded case that felt cheap to him, and he didn’t like the action on the button. He could picture it jamming in a crucial situation. Better to err on the side of too much force than too little. What if he zaps a dangerous enemy and nothing happens? For all he knows, the person might zap him back, or shoot him.

  “Image please.”

  Espinoza waits a full minute and then responds, “Good, huh?”

  “What?” Smedley answers.

  “The image I sent.”

  “Didn’t receive.”

  “Shit,” Espinoza answers. “Transmission … dead … border … more later. Bye.”

  He turns the corner and a gust of wind al
most knocks the paper cone of churros from his hand. He looks across the street and spots the Artemis. She has a hand on her head, holding back her hair. He captures the image just as she looks up to see him. Then she dives into a shoe store. Espinoza takes a moment to study the image in his boost. The colors are a bit faded, which makes her look even more sublime. He sends the image to Smedley while wondering, as he nibbles on a churro, if ugly Artemi are as rare as three-legged dogs, or if ugliness is even possible for such creatures.

  Smedley immediately messages back. “That’s her. Holding on to her wig with her hand! Interdict.”

  Standing on the corner, Espinoza reaches for another churro and mulls the possibility of an ugly Artemis. It’s probably something philosophers write about, he thinks, flattering himself. Then he hurries across the street.

  3/7/72 11:11 a.m. Mountain Standard Time

  Ellen watches him come toward her. She snaps an image. A passing horse obscures most of Espinoza’s face and body. All that can be seen of him is a greasy paper cone lifted high and the right side of his face. She sends it to Simon all the same and snaps another one as Espinoza runs between two horses, sidesteps a taco cart, and enters the store. Breathing hard, he walks straight up to her and says, “Señorita, I think you dropped this.” He presents her the paper cone with one remaining churro. The grease has made the gray paper transparent.

  “That’s not mine!” Ellen says as she captures another image, this one full face.

  Espinoza tries to exchange introductory packets with her, but Ellen blocks him from her boost. She sits down in one of the blue chairs and asks a young saleswoman wearing a white smock if she can see the line of Catspaws in size 7.

  “It comes in black, gray, white, and a mixture of orange and white that we call popcorn,” the woman says.

  Ellen asks to see them all. As the saleswoman disappears into the stock room, Espinoza lowers himself into the chair next to Ellen. He’s eating a churro. “Do I know you?” she asks.

  “From the bar last night,” he says, with his mouth full. “Oscar Espinoza.” He smiles and extends a large dirty hand, which she ignores.

  “I have the feeling you’re following me.”