All Rights Reserved

by Gregory Scott Katsoulis

  The imposing marble building made me uneasy. It’s one of the few in the city built from real stone, not printed layers of plastic. It is meant to intimidate. Obedience to the Law is Freedom™ is chiseled over the columned entrance, a hundred feet above me in letters twice my height. The Commander-in-Chief Justice adjudicates there when he isn’t ruling the Supreme Court™. I’d never been inside, and couldn’t imagine I ever would. Arkansas Holt would cave in to any Lawsuit before it got to court.

  The streets were mostly empty this late at night. The buildings’ eaves were dotted with lights that overhung the street, nearly obscuring the dome above. Ads didn’t follow me into Section Fourteen; I was too poor. The dark and quiet felt peaceful, if a little eerie. I knew I looked horribly out of place. My gray public domain T-shirt and loose blue public domain jeans didn’t belong here, but I walked on with a tense resolve. I might as well walk the whole eleven miles around the city; I was nearly halfway. What did a few hours more matter?

  I’d rarely been out here. Section Fourteen was the only part of the city with an English name, supposedly because the French word for it was too close to Quatrième.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move across a rooftop at the far side of the Court House Plaza. The Law Firms were closed and dark. Glum as I felt, I was thrilled by a glimpse of what I was sure was a Product Placer. I had never seen one before, even though Sam and I had been going up to our roof to look for them for years.

  I followed to where the dark shape went. I waited, looking up, but there was nothing there. Someone called from behind me.

  “Speth?” he said, as if he knew me.

  I turned. It was no Product Placer. Walking up the sidewalk, followed by eager Ads, was an Affluent I did not recognize. He had a broad, flushed face, with a small, piggish nose and a thin goatee cut to a fine point beneath his chin. You could tell he’d been LaserShaved™. He was trim and fit, a good foot taller than me, with overlarge, muscled arms. He was dressed for the evening, with a formal black waistcoat and a platinum-rimmed Cuff poking out from his sleeve. The platinum ring was a thing for Affluents. It signaled intent and willingness to offer free speaks—a successful pickup technique. It was odd that he was alone; the city was full of young girls willing to trade their company for the ability to freely talk. Why bother me?

  I pretended I hadn’t heard him and picked up my pace. He called my name again and jogged to catch up.

  “You’re that Silent Girl, right?” His Cuff vibrated. He looked at it, as if thinking of holding it out to me, then he thought better of it. “What a shame. You have a lovely mouth.”

  Charming, I thought. Sometimes it was nice to think words clearly in my head, even if I could not say them. He was not so ugly that he should have a hard time finding companionship, but something about him felt wrong. Maybe it was because he was standing too close. Or because he was twice my age, or even older. It could be difficult to gauge the age of an Affluent with all the options for cosmetic surgery and youth treatments.

  An Ad strip at the corner of a building burst to life, bright blue and silent. Ads had to run silent from midnight to six in the good neighborhoods. A bottle of mouthwash popped up and spun, like it was desperate for him to drink it. Smelling his sour breath, I was a little desperate for him to drink it, too.

  “I feel bad for you. It can’t be easy, not being able to speak. I’ll bet a lot of people think they can get you to talk. I saw that the Daily Spec™ will pay $15,000 for proof you can. I don’t need the money, of course.”

  He pulled back his sleeve to make sure I could see the platinum ring. His eyes closed for a moment, and he swayed in place before steadying himself again. He had obviously been drinking. Across the narrow alley, between shops, another Ad strip popped to life. The mouthwash bottle hopped across and back. The systems must have scanned his breath. He leaned over me, his hand pressing flat on the Ad. Under the bad breath were wafts of cologne or perfumed liquor. He looked up and down the empty street.

  “I sure wouldn’t mind though,” he said, “if you did make a sound.”

  I held up my arm to press him back. My Cuff burst to life, sparkling with another mouthwash Ad. His face lit from below. His eyes rolled down to see, sharklike, making him look crazed. He knocked my Cuff away with his own, and then jammed his Cuff under my neck.

  “Why don’t you cry for help?”

  His Cuff vibrated against my throat as his words rolled out of sight under my chin—$15.94. I pushed at his shoulders, and when that failed to move him, I kneed him, hard, in the groin. He bent over with a groan, 99¢, but kept a grip on me and began pulling me into the alley.

  My heart pounded like a rabbit’s. No one would hear us. No one would help me. I pushed out against him, but he pinned me to the wall with his arm across my neck. I kicked, and he choked me harder. A sound escaped—a slight gasp. He stopped a moment. His face lit with excitement. I felt his heartbeat under mine, less frenzied, but fast and relentless. My Cuff registered nothing.

  I was not going to scream, or cry out, not for this monster. I clawed at him, desperate, swearing to myself I wouldn’t stay out this late again, if I could just get away.

  Two men passed on the street, just a few feet from us. They pretended to be enraptured by Ads and walked quickly out of view, the mouthwash chasing happily after them.

  “Silent Girl,” my attacker said, his face next to mine, his foul breath beginning to turn my stomach. “You won’t be able to tell anyone what happened, will you?”

  Above us came a sound, a slight creak, and he looked up. I shoved him back, and his hold slipped enough for me to duck away. I turned fast to run, but suddenly he had hold of my leg, yanking on it, and I slammed to the ground face first. A jarring pain made my head swim. My chin felt like it had split open.

  “I don’t actually want you to make a sound.” He laughed, climbing onto my back and pinning me facedown on the pavement. “That way, no one knows where you are, or what we’ve done.” He let the pressure up a little, but not enough for me to escape. “It will be a secret we can share.” He began fiddling with something on his clothes.

  With panic, I realized there was no record of me. Only his words would be recorded. He could have been talking to himself, for all I could prove. Location is only logged when there is a transaction—when you speak, write or buy. Privacy Laws are few, but this was one of the big ones. I should have screamed so my location was known. I should have done something. I could have called out Police! and my Cuff would have autodialed the authorities and recorded this mess. Was my silence worth this?

  “Sluk!” He grabbed my hair, yanked my head back and then toppled over, landing with a thud, like he had suddenly, forcefully, passed out. I didn’t understand what had happened. I dragged myself out from underneath him and slowly comprehended he had not fallen on his own.

  A man stood over me, dressed entirely in black, like a ninja or a superhero from a movie. I rose slowly, a hand on my searing, bloodied chin. The man in black remained still, perhaps to keep from frightening me. Our eyes met, but that was all I could see of him. His face was masked, and I understood why: he was a Product Placer.

  Banded® adhesive strips now have Anti-Scarsilate™! an Ad behind his head texted insistently. For nasty cuts and bruises, Anti-Scarsilate™ brings the healing. My chin was sure to scar, just as Saretha’s elbow had. The Ad showed instant healing, but below it, a disclaimer read Healing not instant—simulated for the purposes of demonstration. Anti-Scarsilate™ hadn’t helped Saretha lose the little crescent moon on her arm, even though she’d been sure it would. I doubted it would help me with this.

  The Ad wasn’t for me, anyway. I didn’t rate. It was for my unconscious attacker on the ground.

  The Product Placer stepped back. Keeping his eyes on me, he raised his Cuff arm up and swung it back, smashing into the Ad panel. The glow sputtered in a
strange rainbow of color as shards of the screen fell away. He reached into the shattered panel and pulled out a thin, square chip, then crossed the alley to the other side. He seemed fairly pleased with himself. He repeated the process with the other Ad and handed the chip to me gently. I turned it over in my hands. It was branded and labeled Seagate™ 8PB Q-flash; a simple flash drive you could plug into most computers. Below this was a small, dot-printed label, which read: 24hrlp-3dscn-rs.

  I was a little wobbly. At first I thought it meant something about twenty-four-hour help, but then I realized what the drive contained. It was the Ad panel’s backup loop of the last twenty-four hours of scan data and video. My attack, and my rescue, were on that little chip. It had been recorded and stored for upload and parsing.

  As soon as I understood, the Product Placer snatched the chip back and tucked it away. He hadn’t meant it for me. He was taking it for himself. He wanted to erase any trace he had been in the alley. Product Placers can’t be seen, and they certainly don’t leave evidence behind if they can help it.

  My attacker began to stir. The Product Placer bent down and pulled a small metallic-blue device shaped like a teardrop from his pack. It was no bigger than his thumb. He slid it over the man’s Cuff. The Cuff clicked and released from the man’s arm. My attacker moaned. I didn’t know a device existed that would allow you to remove another person’s Cuff.

  The man screamed, raising his hands to his eyes. Disconnected from the Cuff, he had been shocked for his groan, and then was shocked again for the scream of pain. This time he winced, but held his tongue.

  The Product Placer smiled under his mask and covered his eyes with his hands, then revealed them, like he was playing peekaboo. It was awfully shrewd to take the man’s Cuff. My attacker wouldn’t be able to report anything to the police until a new Cuff was assigned. That could take weeks, even with his wealth.

  The Placer closed the man’s Cuff over a loop on his backpack. The platinum ring glinted in the dark. A second later, the Placer scrambled up a rope so thin and black, it almost looked like he was pantomiming his way up the side of the building.

  “You—” My attacker tried to speak, blindly casting around, but even that single word was cut short by a hard wince as he held his hands to his eyes.

  Acting more from instinct than good sense, I found the thin rope and scrambled up, away from my attacker. I never should have seen the Placer, but now that I had, I needed to know more.

  PLACERS: $15.99

  The Placer could have killed me. If he’d cut the rope, or yanked his grappling hook free, or just given me a gentle push, I would have tumbled five stories down to the ground. My head was still swimming with pain; I had been foolish to climb at all.

  Instead, he pulled me up. I guess it would have been stupid to kill me after the effort he put in to save me. His team was waiting, looking down at me.

  I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to pretend I hadn’t seen them. But I was slowly realizing that I wasn’t very good at doing what was expected of me.

  There were three of them, standing there, watching me. Even under their masks, I could sense irritation. The one with the most gear and the fiercest eyes gave me the harshest stare. My chin still throbbed, and the pain radiated out to my jaw and my skull, yet I was thrilled. I was actually seeing Placers!

  Everything the Placers wore was matte black: their clothes, gloves, backpacks, tool belts and even the boxes they carried. Every surface seemed to eat light. I could scarcely tell where one ended and the next began. I guessed this team was high-end—a swag crew out to place something more than cereal or cola in a neighborhood like this.

  The one I had followed, the biggest of the bunch, made a gesture in the air, drawing a very gently arced line slowly ahead of himself with this thumb and forefinger. He moved it suddenly, straight to the right, then dropped it down with a twist. This obviously meant something to the others, because they stepped back. The leader held her finger firm, pointing at the ground. This was meant for me. I should go back. I did not move. I put a hand to my aching chin and felt the warm blood there again.

  With a sigh-like drop of her shoulders, the smallest of the group, a petite girl, heaved her considerable pack from her shoulders and silently reached inside it. She pulled out a Product box with an arrangement of therapeutic supplies from Phisior™ to make skin look younger. She took a healing pad from the kit, tore its package open and handed it to me.

  Who were these people? There were few clues. Product Placers were meant to be a mystery. Sam once heard they would bring you a real orange if you kept quiet. Sam had always wanted to taste an orange.

  I didn’t know what to expect from them, but this kindness and aid was not what I had anticipated. Did they know who I was? Or were they surprised that I wasn’t speaking?

  I secured the bandage to my chin, and the large Placer made his gesture again, this time specifically positioning his fingers so that it was clear he was mapping out a route over the buildings.

  Before I could get my bearings, the leader took off, leaping across to the next rooftop. The small one quickly packed up and followed. The big one looked at me and inclined his head so slightly I barely saw it. He wanted me to follow. When he ran, I took a deep breath and plunged forward as well.

  I could have gotten myself killed. I wasn’t at my best, though the bandage soothed my pain and, somehow, my dizziness. Sirens began to wail back near the scene of the attack. The lead Placer picked up her pace.

  Once we were well away from where we’d started, the big one unfastened my attacker’s Cuff from his pack and flung it into the air, where it pinged off the corner of a building and tumbled down ten stories to the alley below. It hit with a hard crack and a dazzling flash of light, followed by a white-hot glow. The Cuff’s NanoLion™ battery had ruptured. The alley might glow for days.

  I stumbled just a moment, thinking of the battery clamped to my wrist. I had to remind myself that ruptures were rare on their own. Rare enough, at least, that NanoLion™ remained profitable. How many suits against them could there be, if their batteries were basically everywhere?

  It was hard to keep up, but I felt exhilarated. The rapid, careful placement of my feet, the strain in my legs as I lengthened my strides and the fluid way I followed how they skipped up over fire escapes and lintels to gain more height brought back the joy of my gymnastics classes. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it. I was only just managing to keep up, thanks to those years of practice. The team moved like gazelles, jumping effortlessly from rooftop to rooftop, never looking down. I should have done the same.

  The buildings on the outer ring are only ten or twelve stories tall. That is as much as the curve of the dome will accommodate here. The gaps between the buildings and their overhanging eaves are mostly eight feet—not a hard distance to jump, but that height is unnerving, and a mistake would be deadly. When the next building was taller, they would leap onto a fire escape with scarcely a noise. When the building dipped lower, they would leap off the edge, grab hold of a rail or pipe and slide down to the next building’s height.

  I lost pace. It irked the leader to slow for me, but I was immensely grateful when she finally did. They were actually allowing me to follow. Where were we going?

  We moved inward, through the wedge of Section Fourteen, across small roofs and big, and soon were five blocks into the Cinquième, one of the six central sections. The buildings here were taller; everything was taller toward the city center. The leader shot a line up a dozen stories. She attached something to it and zipped up at a speed that didn’t look safe. I felt like I was watching a superhero in action.

  The small one quickly did the same. No wonder sightings were so rare; they moved so fast! The biggest one held out his arms to me, a silent offer to take me along. I think he was grinning under that mask. I stepped forward and he grasped me tightly a
round the waist. A second later, we were hurtling up thirty stories.

  The roof door was already open when we arrived. The other two Placers had headed inside. The one beside me pried my hand loose from his arm and, with a click, brought up the guide wire behind us.

  Beyond the doorway, the stairwell was lit in a warm amber light. What was this building? What were we doing here? Inside, the leader had a Pad out, and she held it up to the wall. It showed an apartment beyond, like a fuzzy, luminous window. The inside showed up as a cobalt-blue thermal image of expensive furniture and large, open space. She scanned the full length of the place until she came to a bed and two stout figures asleep inside. They glowed as a hot, round mass together in the room. The leader turned to see if the others agreed this was a good spot. The big one tilted his head to the side and closed his eyes like he was going to sleep.

  Were they going to do a Placement? Was the plan to show me how it was done? This was sort of what I’d pictured when I thought of Product Placers: a coordinated, silent team, sneaking through the night. But there was something odd about this picture—me. Why had they brought me? It didn’t make sense. I couldn’t ask, and if I had, I’m certain they would have shushed me. I might have known a thing or two about being silent, but this crew was as noiseless as air. In comparison, my breath felt loud, and my feet seemed to slide on the carpet like rolling thunder.

  The leader unlocked the apartment door by running a magnetic tool across the edges. The door clicked open. They all rushed inside, silent as ghosts. I followed them, trying to mimic their light steps.

  The big one turned out a padded black cylinder from a long foam bag. It was about twice the thickness of a baseball bat and about a quarter as long. He began working a small screen at the top and held it out into the air. My ears instantly felt like they needed to be cleared. I could no longer hear my breath or my footfalls or anything. The air felt strange. The cylinder was suppressing the sound.