Under the Flickering Light

by Russ Linton

  “Of course,” replied Livingstone.

  M@ti wondered if her entire life’s data profile even made a dent in the terabytes upon terabytes the Warden could process every sleepless nanosecond. With an entire city to analyze, a bag of meat a few feet away wasn’t worth the cycles.

  The Warden’s dreamlike gaze trailed to the bare arm where M@ti had collided. “Trash collection,” she muttered. A message flashed on M@ti’s interface. “I’ve made this one an appointment with a physician,” she said to the Superuser who gave a stiff nod. “Update her account with tokens for the Nexus. Double whatever she has and place her on sick leave.”

  “Leave?” M@ti had had enough of being ignored. “I’m fine. I don’t need leave.”

  A cold stare shut her down. “The physician has already ordered it. Enjoy your time in the Nexus.”

  M@ti bit her lip while the Warden glided away with her flowing dress pressed against a graceful stride and arms folded serenely. The Superuser flunky sneered his disapproval before following.

  M@ti wanted to shout after him how glad she was to be picking up trash and not latching her lips to a synthetic ass. Maybe she should provide a parting gift? Harmless fun like making sure the golden boy’s hov rides always took him to the wrong place or never arrived on time. Without thinking, she switched to another of her custom apps.

  TrueSight. Hacking software. This was the main tool she’d used to create all her best apps. Her view of the world began to glow, revealing hidden connections and open feeds.

  As the Superuser jogged to catch up with the parting goddess, he didn’t turn. But the Warden did.

  That detached and baleful gaze started to settle on M@ti, and she realized her mistake. Livingstone zipped between them. The hidden, secure feeds which TrueSight projected on M@ti’s interface ghosted then collapsed as Livingstone’s insides grumbled.

  M@ti didn’t dare try to correct his glitch this time. She shut down her hacking app and waited for the error to pass. Beyond, the Warden and Superuser disappeared into the park.

  Livingstone’s telescoping eye trembled. “Seems I have maintenance due as well. Best if you go home. Message me after your appointment and let me know what the physician has to say.”

  She nodded and walked numbly away. Livingstone had known about his flaw all this time. And he’d just saved her ass with it.

  3

  PedCreds alerted M@ti to an overbalance in her account as she walked home. Exercise only helped to a certain optimal point. This meant the steps counted for nothing, but that was what she wanted from the Collective — nothing.

  Concrete under her feet, the hot breeze of the hov traffic, and the bleached sensation of battery infused air was what she wanted. Real, unpredictable sensations. No geometry, no hidden algorithms.

  Trying to tag the golden boy right in front of a Warden had been stupid. She’d always kept her hacking low key. Being labeled a terrorist would definitely not improve her lifestyle index. They could cut her access or banish her from the Preserve altogether.

  Not that she hadn’t considered living beneath the city. Her rooftop aerie and personal trash collection had become a tidier reflection of Manhattan’s un-cleansed bowels. With her luck, she’d be cast out entirely into the off-grid wilderness and hunted by the rampaging military experiments left over from humanity’s dark past.

  Passengers spilled out of a hov onto the sidewalk. They spoke loudly as if to challenge the loneliness M@ti found so obvious. None of them acknowledged her or even their fellow riders. A few false starts, and they staggered separate ways.

  M@ti left the street traffic behind as she cut through what she knew to be 114th street. None of the streets had signs. Autonomous hovs didn’t need them for navigation. Among her many treasures though, she owned a map. The laminated tri-fold paper had somehow escaped a couple centuries of insects, rats, and recycling efforts.

  Every so often the AI collection drones missed a pamphlet, or a flyer, or a book. Their function was to digitize all records and free the Earth from the scourge of paper, but not every record was actually uploaded. Some would be tagged as seditious, dangerous, and be destroyed.

  She’d never seen a map like hers in the public directories. Despite the implications, she’d hung it on her wall. Still vibrant, it revealed a city meant to be explored and admired, not hidden behind a digital curtain.

  Even as a kid, she’d decided there was a difference between knowing where you were and being told where you were.

  Because of the map, she understood the meaning of the words on the wrought iron arch outside the enclave where she lived. Glossy black and crowned by an antique coach light, the gilded message read, “PRESENTED BY THE CLASS OF 1929”. Centuries ago, these buildings had been a university. A human university.

  She also knew the first building she passed every day on her way to work had been a library. Its face stretched into a pillared rictus as it sneered at a broad lawn milling with specheads. People used to learn here. Like her map, all hints of what this place used to be had been erased.

  Humans didn’t teach. They were too irrational and prone to spouting ideology, not facts. Still, M@ti couldn’t help but wonder about the way things had been.

  As she entered the courtyard, she tried to imagine these buildings full of people engaged in actual science. Discovery the reward and not meaningless tokens handed out for compliance. Today, her imagination was being tested.

  M@ti passed several citizens, blind to her in their shitty, interpretative dances. A man raced by engaged in a furious firefight opposite a woman giving the empty air a courtly bow. A young girl crouched, involved in a series of intricate gestures. She could’ve been performing an incantation beside a boiling cauldron or baking a prize-winning cupcake. Whatever she was doing, she wasn’t science-ing.

  An elderly man nearly collided with her.

  “Excuse me,” she shouted. She had a profanity filled response scripted and ready to execute, but the words failed her.

  The man twirled by, his arms spread in a ghostly embrace. He was dancing. Head held high, black flecks dusted his trimmed beard and disheveled hair. What made him really stand out though was his worn and frayed three piece suit.

  And she thought her sanitation coveralls and wrecked combat boots made a statement among the generic smocks.

  Most of Manhattan’s citizens wore the mass produced, sturdy onesies offered by the Collective or, if they had the tokens, a Nexus interface jumpsuit. Virtual lives couldn’t be bothered with real world fashion. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d seen people wandering the streets in nothing but their specs.

  Still, there was something else off about the old man which she couldn’t place as he twirled into the crowd. Older generations could be strange. Rumor had it some had even been born from actual wombs before people had finally let go of that horrific practice. Not just their clothes but their physical appearances could be bizarre when compared to younger citizens. Genetic impurity brought on by too much experimentation.

  Or so the Collective taught.

  She lost sight of the man, dancing his way between buildings. How old would he have to be to still show the signs of a genetic mutt? Likely he was batshit crazy if he’d lived that long with such a flawed genetic profile. Bodies were easier to heal than minds, even for the Collective. Nobody wanted to admit longer and longer lifespans had a price. Ultimately though, people just wanted to be lied to.

  A short flight of steps bisected the green lawn. At the top, the brick thoroughfare where M@ti walked cradled a round platform. She took the steps two at a time and leapt onto the platform where she took a seat, legs dangling over the edge.

  Two bronze crescents flanked her on the platform. These were inscribed with the months of the year along a carefully segmented line. She traced the path with her finger against the flow of time. Her hand stopped on a separate plaque with a Latin inscription. She’d translated the phrase often, but called her HUD out of the background anyway and let t
he algorithms do the work.

  Await, the hour will come.

  She’d figured out a while ago that this hadn’t been just a podium. This had been an exquisitely unique sundial. She’d generated a few models to understand what possibly could’ve cast the right shadow and had come up with an absurdly enormous sphere.

  Yet another example of humanity’s former idiocy, the Collective would say. Who would bother making such an awkwardly giant sundial long after people had pocket watches and clocks? Cure cancer with round walls and use a two-ton testicle to tell time. Sure. Sounds right.

  M@ti saw ingenuity, not idiocy.

  Manhattan, the parks and open spaces, were full of sculptures like this. This wasn’t even her favorite one. Aged and worn, they’d been protected by virtue of being in the area marked as a Preserve. Some even still had messages the Collective might consider subversive. But they hadn’t bothered to remove them. The words might as well have been ancient treasures of a forgotten civilization lost at sea. No explorers were left to find this Atlantis.

  None, except her. Most days, M@ti liked it that way. The waking world was her own secret playground.

  She scanned the lawn for the dancing man. Stocky, yet fluid, he appeared so enraptured she almost couldn’t hold whatever fantasy he’d cooked up in the Nexus against him. Whichever world he chose to live in, he’d developed actual dance skills while the rest of the specheads shambling about the lawn engaged in seizures made graceful only in their virtual realms.

  She only knew one other citizen who used the Nexus for something other than delusion.

  They’d met almost a year ago when the rapid fire rumble of dual bass pedals had called to her. In Central Park on routine trash duty, she’d talked Livingstone into following the shudder in her chest. They’d soon found the source.

  A drummer perched on the edge of the Blue Pit with his kit. Sound rippled up from the concrete bowl and pelted them like heavy rain. His limbs moved tirelessly, and he kept the beat with a rapid twitch of his entire body.

  She should’ve called Emergency Services to report the trespass. The Blue Pit was gated and locked. Instead, M@ti had talked her boss down and made him wait for the entire set. When the drummer finished and logged out, he lowered his specs and saw them watching. He started to pack his kit with sideways glances.

  “You should check out the show in the Nexus,” he muttered, loading his drums onto a handcart. “Better when you get the whole band.”

  “Better when I feel it,” she replied, low and husky. That got him to look up. She laughed.

  He smirked but his eyes went apprehensively to Livingstone. “Do what you gotta do, bot.”

  M@ti watched the drummer as he approached the locked gate, dragging his cart. She’d shutdown her default HUD while he played to avoid inadvertently tipping off the Collective. When she brought the interface forward, she saw a penalty had been placed on his account. M@ti cleared her throat and wrinkled her nose at Livingstone.

  “He is in violation of well-established boundaries. I have no choice.” Livingstone said this sounding as though the decision had been made for him already. “There may even be further punishment.”

  M@ti’d worked with Livingstone so closely she’d practically forgotten his real role. Anytime she wanted something, he usually backed down. This time had felt different. Protective? Jealous? She wasn’t sure he could even replicate those emotions.

  “What’s your name?” she asked the drummer.

  “Knuckles,” he said. As he reached the gate he glanced at them before shoving a length of wire into the lock. “Before you get too ban happy, no, I didn’t have this taught to me on the outside.” The padlock clicked, and he gave a satisfied smile. “Level seventy rogue in Dungeon Delvers.” He freed the lock and spun it around his fingers. “The Collective really ought to pay attention to how realistic some of their simulations are.”

  “Ban happy? However the Wardens pursue this is beyond my control,” Livingstone said.

  M@ti forced the gate open and stepped inside. “Report me too then.”

  Livingstone’s head quirked. “There is a difference. I am your supervisor. We have...latitude so you are allowed to enter off limits areas and pursue your duties.”

  “Well, get some latitude with my new friend here.”

  Livingstone couldn’t find a way to respond. In the end, he didn’t fully report either of them. Nor did he complain as she walked away with Knuckles. He only left an uncomfortable silence.

  That was months ago, and nothing had happened to her friend. M@ti knew as well as anyone their caretakers stored every bit of sound and video picked up by any drone, sensor, AI, or the billions of individual specs given to every human citizen. Even the capture from her own implants was fair game — if she hadn’t already found a way to bypass the feed using TrueSight.

  What she knew that most humans didn’t was despite the Collective’s advanced technology and their prime intelligence flowing from a singularity bordering on the divine, there was no possible way they could process everything. She could afford to play the odds every so often.

  Besides, the power source alone for that kind of processing would be unimaginable. Irrational. Like using a giant sphere to track time.

  The Collective didn’t have that kind of creativity. They couldn’t. They weren’t human. Not even close.

  Their lack of humanity made her shiver. Thanks to her earlier encounter with the Warden, she now had a physical scheduled. Humans might’ve led the medical sciences into all sorts of blind alleys, but they had warm, soft hands. She’d risk cancer for gentle hands. For eyes which regarded her as something other than a specimen.

  No matter how close the AI tourist suits got to replicating human expressions, the eyes would never be right.

  Calculation, not affection. Those were the same eyes of the Warden. Dead. Empty. Burned into her memory from when she suckled at a synthetic breast.

  M@ti’s display flashed a pulse reminding her of unspent Nexus credits. The sensors and implants always knew when she was at her most vulnerable. The Nexus would gladly help her forget her worldly concerns.

  She stood up and dusted herself off. Those tokens granted by the Warden would see some use. Just not by her.

  The elderly gentleman she’d seen earlier swayed sprightly past the base of the stairs and M@ti got a closer look. That’s what had seemed weird — no specs, not even the clunky, previous generation ones.

  Most old-timers like that didn’t trust the newly approved implant surgery. Anybody who had a choice would be smart enough not to. She tried to make out the tell-tale spark in his eyes of retinal implants, but he’d spun on his toes and into a graceful pirouette before rounding on her, palms planted on the base of the platform. Their eyes locked, his pupils dark and steady.

  “Your hour. It is here,” he said, his gaze full of urgency. “Be ready.”

  Before she’d recovered, he’d disappeared once again into the crowd.

  4

  A message flashed across M@ti’s crowded display. “Warning! Falling hazard! Check your surroundings before continuing your session!”

  Ten stories above the street, feet dangling over the rooftop ledge, she swiped her hand and forced LifeMinder into the background.

  Sounds of hov traffic washed up from the brick and asphalt canyons of the city. The steady rush would abruptly pinch as individual hover cars broke free and released their passengers before slipping back into the stream. No taillights, no headlamps necessary, their exhaust ports glowed, and interiors shone faintly with their passengers’ Nexus gear.

  Where the driverless hovs stopped, wisps of light bounced along the sidewalks. Specheads. M@ti couldn’t separate them from the shadows except for their glowing eyes. They always stepped straight from curb to building. The ruthlessly efficient hovs and the specs guided citizens to their doorsteps without interrupting their Nexus games. Meandering walks through the city had become another casualty and M@ti, an endangered species.


  But she had a few games of her own to play tonight. She opened her customized interface and fired up another app she’d created.

  “Time for a little GTA.”

  Alphanumeric characters overlaid the street. The automated hovs processed their sensor data finely enough to thread intersections within millimeters of crossing traffic. Blocks of code pulsed above each hov with passenger and cargo lists, the pickup and drop-off points, the latest maintenance records — all recorded and reported. Microscopic rotary sensors and nanofluids issued a cascade of diagnostics which triggered calls for scheduled maintenance at local repair bays where robotic mechanics labored tirelessly under their own self-managed schedules.

  All of this information was absorbed by the multi-chain in a complex negotiation. In the fractions of a second it took for a passenger’s ride contract to resolve, the next route and dozens after it had already been determined. M@ti likened it all to the movements of planets and stars, predictable yet mysterious.

  No data point was too insignificant, and this was just from the hovs. The Collective processed every detail of human life on this planet. And beyond.

  Once somebody had claimed to be able to see the future in this fathomless data. A weird astrology for the digital age. When the topic had come up, M@ti’d been lurking in a hidden alley of the Nexus where the environment was nothing but text. Sorcerous, alchemical, understanding the forgotten terminology the hackers used was a badge of pride. She’d replied to this guy’s claim with one of those anachronisms: LOL. Then the moderator, CRACK3n, had interrupted.

  Our future? Easy. They create it. Theirs is the real mystery. Wouldn’t you say, M@ti?

  Vix was the handle she used in the forum. Poor form for a moderator to be doxing members. Whatever. M@ti had logged out and not gone back. She’d already accessed their file service to download all the hacking tools she’d ever need.