Rewired

by James Patrick Kelly

  “My name is Tito Harnnoy, and I represent the Masqueleros. We will help you, hombre!”

  6

  The Manchurian Candidate

  Tito Harnnoy drove his battered industrial-model two-person Segway down Mass Ave toward Cambridge. Riding behind Harnnoy, Bash experienced a creeping nostalgia, not altogether pleasant, that grew stronger the closer they approached his old alma mater, MIT.

  Although Bash, once he became rich, had given generously to his university, endowing entire buildings, scholarship funds, research programs and tenured positions, he had not returned physically to the campus since graduation. The university held too many memories of juvenile sadness and loneliness blended with his culminating triumph. Whenever Bash cast his thoughts back to those years, he became again to some degree the geeky prodigy, a person he felt he had since outgrown. His maturity always a tenuous proposition, Bash felt it wisest not to court such retrogressive feelings. But now, apparently, he had no choice but to confront his past self.

  Harnnoy broke Bash’s reverie by saying, “Just a few smoots away from help, pard.”

  Indeed, they were crossing the Charles River into Cambridge. The scattered structures of MIT loomed ahead, to east and west.

  Bash noted extraordinary activity on the water below. “What’s happening down there?” he asked Harnnoy.

  “Annual Dragon Boat Festival. Big Asian carnival today, pard.”

  Harnnoy brought the scooter to a gyroscopic stop nearly below the shadow of the Great Dome and they dismounted. Walking into the embrace of the buildings that comprised the Infinite Corridor, they attained grassy Killian Court. The bucolic campus scene reflected the vibrant July day.

  Several artists were “painting” the passing parade from various perspectives, employing smart styluses on canvases of proteopape. Depending on the applications the artists used, their strokes translated into digitized pastels or charcoal, acrylics or oils, ink or pencil or watercolor. Some had style filters in place, producing instant Monets or Seurats.

  Elsewhere a kite-fighting contest was underway. Made of proteopape with an extra abundance of special MEMS, the kites could flex and flutter their surfaces and achieve dynamic, breeze-assisted flight. Tetherless, they were controlled by their handlers who employed sheets of conventional proteopape on the ground that ran various strategy programs and displayed the kites’-eye view. Curvetting and darting, the lifelike kites sought to batter aerial opponents and knock them from the sky without being disabled in turn.

  Elsewhere, sedentary proteopape users read magazines or newspapers or books, watched various videofeeds, mailed correspondents, telefactored tourist autonomes around the globe, or performed any of a hundred other proteopape-mediated functions.

  Conducting Bash through the quad and toward the towering Building 54, Harnnoy said, “I’m glad you decided to trust the Masqueleros, Applebrook. We won’t let you down. It’s a good thing we have our own ways of monitoring interesting emergent shit around town. We keep special feelers out for anything connected with your name, you know.”

  Bash didn’t know. “But why?”

  “Are you kidding? You’re famous on campus. The biggest kinasehead ever to emerge from these hallowed halls, even considering all the other famous names. And that’s no intronic string.”

  Bash felt weird. Had he really become some kind of emblematic figure to this strange younger generation? The honor sat awkwardly on his shoulders.

  “Well, that’s a major tribute, I guess. I only hope I can live up to your expectations.”

  “Even if you never released anything beyond proteopape, you already have. That’s why we want to help you now. And it’s truly exonic that we managed to get a spy — me — into place for your meeting with the Dubsters. Those sugar-bags would never have lifted a pinky finger to aid you.”

  Despite the worshipful talk, Bash still had his doubts about the utility and motives of the mysterious Masqueleros, but the intransigence of Cricket’s friends left him little choice. (Ms. Licklider herself, although expressing genuine sympathy, had had no solid aid of her own to offer.)

  “I really appreciate your help, Tito. But I’m still a little unclear on how you guys hope to track Dagny down.”

  “Cryonize your metabolism, pard. You’ll see in a minute.”

  Descending a few stairs into an access well, they stopped at an innocuous basement door behind Building 54. A small square of proteopape was inset above the door handle. Harnnoy spit upon it.

  “Wouldn’t the oils on your fingers have served as well?” Bash asked.

  “Sure. But spitting is muy narcocorrido.”

  “Oh.”

  The invisible lab in the paper performed an instant DNA analysis on Harnnoy’s saliva, and the door swung open.

  Inside the unlit windowless room, a flock of glowing floating heads awaited.

  The faces on the heads were all famous ones: Marilyn Monroe, Stephen Hawking, Britney Spears (the teenage version, not the middle-aged spokesperson for OpiateBusters), President Winfrey, Freeman Dyson, Walt Whitman (the celebrations for his 200th birthday ten years ago had gained him renewed prominence), Woody Woodpecker, SpongeBob SquarePants, Bart Simpson’s son Homer Junior.

  “Welcome to the lair of the Masqueleros,” ominously intoned a parti-faced Terminator.

  Bash came to a dead stop, stunned for a moment, before he realized what he was seeing. Then he got angry.

  “Okay, everybody off with the masks. We can’t have any proteopape around while we talk.”

  Overhead fluorescents flicked on, and the crowd of conspirators wearing only the cowls of their camo suits stood revealed, the projected faces fading in luminescence to match the ambient light. One by one the Masqueleros doffed their headgear to reveal the grinning motley faces of teenagers of mixed heritage and gender. One member gathered up the disguises, including Harnnoy’s full suit, and stuffed the potentially treacherous proteopape into an insulated cabinet.

  Briefly, Bash recapped his problem for the attentive students. They nodded knowingly, and finally one girl said, “So you need to discover this bint’s hiding place without alerting her to your presence. And since she effectively controls every piece of proteopape in the I2-verse, your only avenue of information is seemingly closed. But you haven’t reckoned with—the internet!”

  “The internet!” fumed Bash. “Why don’t I just employ smoke signals or, or — the telegraph? The internet is dead as Xerox.”

  A red-haired kid chimed in. “No latch, pard. Big swaths of the web are still in place, maintained by volunteers like us. We revere and cherish the kludgy old monster. The web’s virtual ecology is different now, true, more of a set of marginal biomes separated by areas of clear-cut devastation. But we still host thousands of webcams. And there’s no proteopape in the mix, it’s all antique silicon. So here’s what we do. We put a few agents out there searching, and I guarantee that in no time at all we spot your girlfriend.”

  Sighing, Bash said, “She’s not my girlfriend. Oh, well, what’ve I got to lose? Let’s give it a try.”

  The Masqueleros and Bash crowded into an adjacent room full of antique hardware, including decrepit plasma flatscreens and folding PDA peripheral keyboards duct-taped into usability. The trapped heat and smells of the laboring electronics reminded Bash of his student days, seemingly eons removed from the present. Several of the Masqueleros sat down in front of their machines and begin to mouse furiously away. Interior and exterior shots of Greater Boston as seen from innumerable forgotten and dusty webcams swarmed the screens in an impressionistic movie without plot or sound.

  Tito Harnnoy handed Bash a can of Glialsqueeze pop and said, “Refresh yourself, pard. This could take awhile.”

  Eventually Bash and Tito fell to discussing the latest spintronics developments, and their potential impact on proteopape.

  “Making the circuitry smaller doesn’t change the basic proteopape paradigm,” maintained Bash. “Each sheet gets faster and boasts more capacity, but
the standard functionality remains the same.”

  “Nuh-huh! Spintronics means that all of proteopape’s uses can be distributed into the environment itself. Proteopape as a distinct entity will vanish.”

  Bash had to chew on this disturbing new scenario for a while. Gradually, he began to accept Harnnoy’s thesis, at least partially. Why hadn’t he seen such an eventuality before? Maybe Dagny had been right when she accused him of losing his edge….

  “Got her!”

  Bash and the others clustered around one monitor. And there shone Dagny.

  She sat in a small comfy nest of cushions and fast-food packaging trash, a large sheet of proteopape in her lap.

  “What camera is this feed coming from?” Bash said.

  “It’s mounted at ceiling level in the mezzanine of the Paramount Theater on Washington Street, down near Chinatown.”

  When Bash had been born in 1999, the Paramount Theater, one of the grand dames of twentieth-century Hollywood’s Golden Age, had already been shuttered for over two decades. Various rehabilitation plans had been tossed about for the next fifteen years, until Bash entered MIT. During that year, renovations finally began. The grand opening of the theater coincided with the churning of the economy occasioned by the release of proteopape and also with a shortlived but scarily virulent outbreak of Megapox. Faced with uncertain financing, fear of contagion in mass gatherings, and the cheapness of superior home-theater systems fashioned of proteopape, the revamped movie house had locked its doors, falling once again into genteel desuetude.

  “Can you magnify the view?” Bash asked. “See what she’s looking at?”

  The webcam zoomed in on the sheet of paper in Dagny’s lap.

  And Bash saw that she was watching them.

  In infinite regress, the monitor showed the proteopape showing the monitor showing the proteopape showing…..

  Bash howled. “Someone’s got proteopape on them!”

  Just then a leering Dagny looked backward over her shoulder directly at the webcam, and at the same time Bash’s chin spoke.

  “It’s you, you idiot,” said Bash’s epidermis in Dagny’s stepped-down voice.

  Bash ripped off the smart band-aid he had applied while shaving, and the image of the Masqueleros on Dagny’s proteopape swung crazily to track the movement.

  “Dagny!” Bash yelled into the band-aid. “This has gone far enough! You’ve had your fun at my expense. Now give me your current password so I can make proteopape secure again.”

  “Come and get it,” taunted Dagny. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “I will!”

  With that bold avowal, Bash furiously twisted the band-aid, causing the image of the Masqueleros on Dagny’s proteopape to shatter. On the monitor screen she appeared unconcerned, lolling back among her cushions like the Queen of Sheba.

  Bash turned to Tito. “Lend me a phone and your Segway. I’m going to nail this troublemaker once and for all.”

  “Some of us’ll go with you, pard.”

  “No, you stay here. Dagny won’t react well to intimidation by a bunch of strangers. And besides, I need the Masqueleros to keep on spying on her and feed me any updates on her actions. All I can hope is that she’ll listen to me and abandon this insane vendetta. If she doesn’t—Well, I’m not sure what I’ll do.”

  “No problemo, fizz.”

  Someone handed Bash a phone. He downloaded his identity into it, then established an open channel to Harnnoy. After tucking the phone into the neckline of his shirt, allowing him to speak and be spoken to hands-free, Bash darted from the underground room.

  7

  Phantom of the Opera

  Bash made it as far as Killian Court before the first of Dagny’s attacks commenced.

  On all the canvases of the amateur painters, on all the individual sheets of proteopape held by the idling students, Bash’s face appeared, displacing laboriously created artworks, as well as the contents of books, magazines and videos. (Dagny had unearthed a paparazzo’s image of Bash that made him look particularly demented.) And from the massed speakers in the proteopape pages boomed this warning in a gruff male voice:

  “Attention! This is a nationwide alert from Homeland Security. All citizens should immediately exert extreme vigilance for the individual depicted here. He is wanted for moral turpitude, arrogant ignorance, and retrogressive revanchism. Approach him with caution, as he may bite.”

  This odd yet alarming message immediately caused general consternation to spread throughout the quadrangle. Bash turned up his shirt collar, hunched down his head and hurried toward the street. But he had not reckoned with the kites.

  Homing in on his phone, the co-opted kites began to dive-bomb Bash. Several impacted the ground around him, crumpling with a noise like scrunching cellophane, but one scored a direct hit on his head, causing him to yelp. His squeal attracted the eyes of several onlookers, and someone shouted, “There he is!”

  Bash ran.

  He thought briefly of abandoning his phone, but decided not to. He needed to stay in touch with the Masqueleros. But more crucially, giving up his phone would achieve no invisibility.

  Bash was moving through a saturated I2 environment. There was no escaping proteopape. Every smart surface — from store windows to sunglasses, from taxi rooftop displays to billboards, from employee nametags to vending machines — was a camera that would track him in his dash across town to the Paramount Theater. Illicitly tapping into all these sources, utilizing common yet sophisticated pattern recognition, sampling and extrapolative software, Dagny would never lose sight of her quarry. Bash might as well have had cameras implanted in his eyeballs.

  Out on Mass Ave, Bash faced no interception from alarmed citizens. Apparently the false security warning had been broadcast only in Killian Court. But surely Dagny had further tricks up her striped sleeves.

  He spoke into his dangling phone. “What’s she doing now?”

  Harnnoy’s voice returned an answer. “Noodling around with her pape. She’s got her back to the camera, so we can’t see what kind of scripts she’s running.”

  “Okay, thanks. I’m hitting the road now.”

  Once aboard the Segway, Bash headed back toward downtown Boston.

  He came to a halt obediently at the first red light, chafing at the delay. But something odd about the engine noise of the car approaching behind him made Bash look over his shoulder.

  The car — a 2029 Vermoulian with proteopape windows — was not slowing down.

  In a flash, Bash realized what was happening.

  Dagny had edited out both the traffic light and Bash’s scooter from the driver’s interior display.

  Bash veered his Segway to the right, climbing the curb, and the Vermoulian zipped past him with only centimeters to spare. In the middle of the intersection it broadsided another car. Luckily, the crash of the two lightweight urban vehicles, moving at relatively low speeds, resulted in only minor damages, although airbags activated noisily.

  Bash drove down the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians, and continued around the accident.

  Things were getting serious. No longer was Dagny content merely to harass Bash. Now she was involving innocent bystanders in her mad quest for revenge.

  His ire rising, Bash crossed the Charles River. Beneath the bridge, huge jubilant crowds had assembled for the Dragon Boat races.

  Bash took several wrong turns. Dagny had changed the street signs, misnaming avenues along his entire route and producing a labyrinth of new oneway streets. After foolishly adhering to the posted regulations for fear of getting stopped by some oblivious rule-bound cop, Bash abandoned all caution and just raced past snarled traffic down whatever avenue he felt would bring him most quickly to Washington Street.

  Now Bash began to see his face everywhere, in varying sizes, surmounted or underlined by dire warnings. WANTED FOR CULTURAL ASSASSINATION, GUILTY OF SQUANDERING ARTISTIC CAPITAL, MASTERMIND IN FELONIOUS ASSAULT ON VISIONARIES….

  The absurd charg
es made Bash see red. He swore aloud, and Harnnoy said, “What’d I do, pard?”

  “Nothing, nothing. Dagny still at the Paramount?”

  “Verdad, compañero.”

  As he approached the Common, Bash noted growing crowds of gleeful pedestrians. What was going on….?

  The Dragon Boat Festival. Chinatown must be hosting parallel celebrations. Well, okay. The confusion would afford Bash cover —

  A sheet of proteopape — spontaneously windblown, or aimed like a missile? — sailed up out of nowhere and wrapped Bash’s head. He jerked the steering grips before taking his hands entirely off them to deal with the obstruction to his vision, and the Segway continued homeostatically on its new course to crash into a tree.

  Bash picked himself up gingerly. The paper had fallen away from his face. Angrily, he crumpled it up and stuffed it into his pocket. He hurt all over, but no important body part seemed broken. The scooter was wrecked. Luckily, he hadn’t hit anyone. Concerned bystanders clumped around him, but Bash brusquely managed to convince them to go away.

  Harnnoy said, “I caught the smashup on the phone camera, Bash. You okay?”

  “Uh, I guess. Sorry about totaling your ride. I’m going on foot now.”

  As Bash scurried off, he witnessed the arrival of several diligent autonomes converging on the accident. He accelerated his pace, fearful of getting corralled by the authorities before he could deal with Dagny.

  Downtown Crossing was thronged, the ambient noise like a slumber party for teenage giants. The windows of Filene’s claimed that Bash was a redactive splice between a skunk, a hyena and a jackal. As Dagny’s interventions failed to stop him, her taunts grew cruder. She must be getting desperate. Bash was counting on her to screw up somehow. He had no real plan otherwise.

  Weaseling his way through the merrymakers, Bash was brought up short a block away from the Paramount by an oncoming parade. Heading the procession was a huge multiperson Chinese dragon. In lieu of dumb paint, its proteopape skin sheathed it in glittery scales and animated smoke-snorting head.