Asimov's Science Fiction: March 2014

by Penny Publications

  "We share the perv gene, Stormy." She grinned back. "So Botão is your girlfriend now?"

  "No one is my girlfriend." His voice was like sandpaper. "She's a reality snob like the rest of them. I mean, suppose we really wanted to get together. Eventually she'd want to come over here for a visit, see me for herself. You know how that goes. Imagine her standing there, staring at this twitchy sack of meat. Romantic or what?"

  Remeny wanted to say something but couldn't think what.

  "I'll take a gun now," Robby said. "Kent's Glock."

  Dad kept his memorabilia in a study at the far end of the house. He had been in flat movies way back, but had made the transition to flix and adventures and sims and even some impersonations. Although he had been cast in all kinds of parts, Jeffrey Daugherty was mostly known for playing bad guys: serial killers, drug lords, CEOs, stalkers and, yes, terrorists. He had won a Golden Globe and an Appie for playing Kent Crill on The Revenger, which was where he had acquired most of the collection of prop weapons displayed behind his desk. Kent had used the Glock to take down his arch-nemesis, the vampire Sir Koko Mawatu, in the Season Five finale. Of course, it was just a prop that didn't really fire silver bullets, but it had the heft of a real gun.

  Remeny parted the ultrasmooth strands of the mesh and offered him the pistol, grip first. He swiped at it and missed the first time but nabbed it on the second try. He settled back, rubbing the steel barrel lengthwise across his cheek. She'd seen his gun fetish many times but it was still something about her brother that she didn't get.

  "It's not Toybox I'm worried about," he said. "Who is this Silk?"

  "I don't know, some rich kid." She shrugged. "I kind of like him."

  "I don't."

  "Why? Because he wants to run the show? So do you. So does Toybox. All you boys doing your alpha male thing—it's kind of cute in an annoying way."

  "He's already got slogans out. A dozen floaties around town—they have to be his. No one else has the money. One keeps circling the town office."

  That was interesting. "Fast work." She called up the satellite image on her glass and zoomed. "Hey, that's some serious signage. Maybe he needs extra credit."

  "It was his idea. Doesn't that seem suspicious?"

  She leaned against the wall and wished once again that he would let her bring a chair when she visited. "No, it wasn't. Botão came up with life, liberty, and..."

  "Just words." He aimed the gun at the carebot and stared down the sights. "The slogan was his idea."

  "So he's smart. So?" She jiggled the net. "Did you tell Botão who you are?"

  "Nuh-uh." He held the gun steady and Remeny could see him mouth the word bang. "But she knows I'm stashed."

  "She knows and she's still interested?"

  "She just thinks she is."

  "Then maybe you're wrong about her. You've got a crush setup here, pal. What if you were stashed in a body stack, like Toybox? Think she'd go all melty over whatever is behind the doors at the Komfort Kare?"

  "She'll still want..."

  "What she wants is Sturm and that's who you are, twenty-three out of every twenty-four hours. Your body is just leftovers."

  His laugh was bitter. "Rah, rah, rah." He waved the Glock in a circle. "Too bad cheerleading doesn't kill the pain anymore."

  Robby was getting weird on her. "I've got to go for a run—overlord orders." She couldn't handle him when he was like this. "You going to stay real for a while?"

  "Sure."

  "Want me to leave Kent's gun? You never know when your arch-nemesis is going to show."

  "No, take it." He thrust the pistol through the mesh. "I'll find some other way to thwart Silk's evil plan." His hand was steady now.

  "He's not your problem." She leaned in close and blew on his face. "See you at dinner then." It was as close to kissing as they got.

  "Something's got to change," he said.

  "Yeah, yeah," she said. "Come the revolution."

  As Remeny jogged up Forest Ridge Road, the spray can of Sez in her fanny pack bounced against her back. She had queried her glass for places she could tag that would have the highest foot traffic. The list was short and most of the choices were in Bedford's modest downtown, a couple of kilometers away. That would mean her graffiti would overlap with Silk's floating ads, but that was okay.

  She began to see bots on errands: delivery bots from Foodmaster and Amazon and Express-It, a MacDonald's dinerbot reeking of yesterday's fries, an empty taxi idling on Little Oak. The first pedestrian she passed was a old man in a breather walking his dog. She saw Officer Shubin's motorcycle parked at the Cocamoca but no Officer Shubin. She slowed to a stop when she spotted the floaty bobbing down Third Street toward her. The squat barrel shape floated at eye level and the slogan scrawled continually around its circumference. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness Life, Liberty, and...

  "Stop," she commanded. Its top propeller rotated one hundred and eighty degrees until it faced in the opposite direction from its bottom propeller. "I have a question."

  "I will try to answer," it said.

  "Who paid for you?"

  "I was hired by PROS, which stands for Protect the Rights of the Occupants of Softtime." It played a short musical flourish.

  "Never heard of it."

  "The organization is less than two hours old."

  Her overlord nagged that her metabolic rate was falling. She began to jog in place.

  "Who's in it?"

  "Membership information is confidential."

  "How long are you contracted for?"

  "I will be proclaiming the new world order in this area through Tuesday."

  New world order? Silk was having delusions of grandeur. "What do you mean: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness?"

  "What does it mean to you?"

  "I don't know. Nothing."

  "PROS would like to change that. If you were to google it...."

  Rememy stopped paying attention and pinged Silk instead. When she got no reply, she queried her glass about floaty rentals. Rates ran between two and three hundred dollars a day depending on the size of the floaty, the sophistication of the pitch and the choice of sales route. She was impressed. Rich was rich, but what teenager would spend two thousand dollars a day on a coop project?

  "Do you have any other questions?" said the floaty.

  On an impulse she reached into her fanny pack, grabbed the Sez can and sprayed call me on the floaty. As it tried to dodge away, it jiggled her "e" into looking like a mutant "p."

  "At 1753," the floaty said, "I identify you as Johanna Daugherty of 7 Forest Ridge Road. Per the Defacement of the Bedford's Commercial Speech Ordinance, you will now be charged the standard rate for use of this device for as long as your unauthorized commentary persists."

  Remeny wasn't worried; the Sez had been in draft mode. "Make sure Silk gets my message."

  "What is Silk?"

  Her graffitti was already fading, so she brushed by the floaty and jogged up Third Street.

  "Your total charge is sixty-seven cents," it called. "Have a nice day."

  More than half of the stores facing Memorial Square had gone out of business. To keep the downtown from looking like a mouthful of broken teeth, the town had paid to have the buildings torn down but had preserved and restored the façades. Behind these were empty lots converted to lawns, gardens, and patios with picnic tables, all tended by bots, all deserted. There were spaces downtown designated for civic tagging as long as the message conformed to font, color, and content guidelines. She sprayed slats of the benches that faced the Civil War monument, the windows on the façade of the Post Office and the abutments of the pedestrian bridge that crossed Sperry Creek. She set the Sez can to a 158 point Engravers font, which she thought looked suitably historic, and set the duration for Tuesday. Same as Silk. Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness fit nicely alongside silence is golden but duct tape is silver, We are not a bot, and Think More About Working Less.

  On th
e way home, she took the shortcut through the grounds of the Gates Early Learning Center since there were designated tagging surfaces at its playground. A handful of little kids milled about in their bulky, augmented reality helmets, pulling up grass, tripping over the balance boosters, hitting trees with sticks. One of them came up to Remeny while she was spraypainting the slide.

  "What's your name?" The girl had an annoying squeaky voice.

  She didn't have time for this—where was the teacher? "Ask your helmet to look me up."

  "Why? You could just tell me."

  Remeny glanced over and saw black curls framing a face pale as a mushroom. She was five or maybe six, wearing a Dotty Karate T-shirt. "Johanna."

  "I'm Meesha, but my real name is Amisha." She pointed at the tag. "What does that say?"

  "Read it yourself." The kid was breaking her concentration.

  "Don't know how."

  "Your helmet does."

  She put her hand over her mouth and whispered the query as if she didn't want Remeny to hear. "I don't know pursuit," she said at last.

  "Your helmet could..." Remeny looked around for help and saw Joan deJean headed her way. "It means to chase after."

  Meesha considered this. "Is that why you're all sweaty? 'Cause you're pursuiting happiness?"

  "Hi, Johanna." Ms. deJean had been Johanna's teacher when she was a kid. "I see you've met Meesha." She put a hand on the girl's shoulder.

  "Hi, Ms. deJean. Yeah, she's not exactly shy."

  "You can say that again." Ms. deJean turned the girl gently and aimed her back toward the other kids. "This is learning time, Meesha. Not chatting time."

  "Chatting can be learning," the girl said.

  "Scoot." She gave her a nudge back toward the center, but Meesha squirmed and skipped away in a different direction. "So what's this?" Ms. DeJean bent over the slide and read.

  Remeny slipped the Sez into her fanny pack. "Coop."

  "Already?" Her old teacher sighed. "Seems like yesterday you were toddling around here, talking back like Meesha." She lit up with the memory. "You and your brother. How is Robby?"

  "He doesn't get out much."

  "No." Her light dimmed. "The Declaration of Independence? You breaking away from something?"

  "I don't know," said Remeny, then she laughed. "Maybe the EOS."

  "Good for you." Joan deJean laughed with her. "It's a train wreck, if you ask me. All software and no people."

  Remeny usually walked Forest Ridge Road to cool down at the end of a run but when she saw her mother and Emily Banerjee sitting on the Banerjees' lawn, she broke into a sprint. Her mother had her arm around Mrs. Banerjee's shoulder and was speaking softly to her.

  "Everything okay?" Remeny pulled up in front of them.

  "Emily isn't feeling well," said Mom. "She's confused."

  The Banerjees had been antiques when the Daughertys had moved in, crinkly and cute as Remeny and Robby grew up. Sadhir Banerjee had died in March and his wife had been lost ever since. Mom had called the son Prahlad last month when she had found Mrs. Banerjee sorting through the Daughertys' garbage at night.

  "I am not confused," said Mrs. Banerjee, "and I will never lie in those coffins."

  "Nobody wants you to, Emily."

  "I watched it on the teevee—just now. Those coffins are small." She spread her palms. "This wide, maybe. And not much longer even." The way her hands shook reminded Remeny of Robby. "They lie awake in the coffin so they can always call other people on the internet but there is no room. Not for everyone. The internet is too small, too, even for an old woman."

  Teevee? The internet? Remeny didn't want to laugh because this was sad. But talk about oldschool.

  "Don't worry, Emily," said Mom. "Prahlad is coming soon."

  "Yeah, it's okay, Mrs. Bannerjee," said Remeny. "You don't have to call people if you don't want."

  Mrs. Banerjee glanced up at Remeny. "You're the girl. Rachel's child. Isn't there a brother?" She pointed a finger as if in accusation. "We never see you kids playing anymore."

  "Johanna, that's right. We're all grown up now."

  "You know in those coffins? The people?" Mrs. Banerjee leaned toward her. "Do you know what they call them?" Her voice was low. "Trash. I swear it, Sadhir was with me, he heard too."

  Remeny and Mom exchanged glances.

  "You mean stash?" said Remeny.

  "Stash?" Mrs. Banerjee rocked back and gazed up at the darkening sky for a moment. "Yes. That was it." She nodded at them. "Stash." Her mouth puckered as if she could taste the word.

  The Daughertys gathered their weekly family dinners in softtime because Dad was so often on location and Robby couldn't leave his room, much less sit at table. Besides, her brother's two thousand calorie high-bulk liquid diet looked to Remeny like just-mixed cement. Not appetizing. Mom had paid for a space in the family domain that recreated the actual dining room at 7 Forest Ridge Road. A buffet with a marble top matched a china closet with glass doors. Its dining room table could seat ten comfortably but had just the four upholstered chairs gathered around one end. The furniture was all dark maple in some crazy oldschool style that featured arabesque inlays, fleur-de-lis and Corinthian columns. The meal that nobody was going to eat was straight out of the darkest twentieth century: a platter of roast chicken—with bones— bowls of mashed potatoes and green beans with pearl onions, a basket of rolls. Remeny thought the whole show a waste of processing power; in soft-time you were supposed to challenge reality, not just fake it. But this was what Mom wanted and Dad always humored her. Robby and Remeny didn't have a vote.

  "The kids were working on their coop today," said Mom.

  "They're on the same team?" Dad liked to sit at these meals with a knife in one hand and a fork in the other, even though all they did was stare at the virtual food. The kids could have made their avatars appear to eat, but their parents, Mom especially, had yet to master the tricks of full immersion. "How does that happen?"

  "Just lucky, I guess." Remeny's dinner was the leftover smoothie and snap peas out of the bag. She ate in her room.

  "So what's it about?"

  "It's kind of boring actually." After talking to Robby that afternoon, Remeny had been hoping coop wouldn't come up.

  "No, it isn't." Her brother opened their private channel with a.(4) impatience blip.

  =We should have this conversation now.=

  =They'll want to talk about it all night. I'm going out later.=

  "Something to do with the Declaration of Independence?" Apparently Mom had been paying attention after all.

  =With Silk?=

  =None of your business.=

  "Oh, right," said Dad. "We the people blah blah in order to form a more perfect union of whatever." Remeny had been hoping that Dad would take the conversation over, as he usually did. "I've always wondered how you get to be more perfect. I played James Madison once, you know, he was a shrimp, five feet four—what's that in meters?"

  "A hundred and sixty-two centimeters." Even though Robby was using his parent friendly version of Sturm—no scars, no iridescence—she could tell he was mad.

  "Just about Johanna's size." Dad's avatar was wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a sailboat motif. As usual, he looked like his hardtime self, handsome as surgery and juv treatments could make an eighty-three-year old, but then his image was part of his actor's brand. "No, wait. That's not right." He pointed his knife at Remeny, as if she were thinking of correcting him. "More perfect union is the Constitution. The Declaration was Jefferson. He was a tall one, him and Washington. Never played Washington. Wanted to, never did, even though we're about the same size."

  "We're declaring our independence," said Robby.

  =Sturm, no.=

  That stopped Dad. "Who?" He frowned. "Teenagers?"

  "Everybody who's stashed. We're giving up on hardtime—reality. We want to live as avatars."

  "Cool." It was exactly the wrong thing to say. Remeny wondered if he'd been biting into a slice of pizza wherever he was
and hadn't been paying attention to the conversation.

  "And how do you propose to do this?" Mom's avatar looked like she had swallowed a brick.

  "Just do it. Stay stashed." Robby gave them a (.6) impatience blip. "Never log off."

  "No blips at the table, please." Mom had strange ideas about manners. "Never come back— ever?"

  Remeny started to say "Only when we want..." but Robby talked over her. "Never." He pushed back his chair and stood up, which seemed to Remeny more disrespectful than a blip. "And we want to be able to overclock as much as we want. Live double time. Triple. Whatever."

  "Now you're talking nonsense," said Mom. "Your brain is not a computer, Robert. Overclocking causes seizures. And being stashed is hard on the body. The mortality rate for..."

  "That's why we overclock," he shouted. "We can burn through years subjective while the meat rots."

  Mom looked shocked that he would use the m-word at the table. Remeny couldn't believe it herself.

  "Sit down, Robby." Dad didn't seem angry. He just scratched his chin with the fork while he waited for Robby to subside. Robby obeyed but sulked. "Funny this should come up. So I'm in Vermont with Spencer this morning..."

  "Jeff." Mom sounded betrayed.

  "Pirates in Vermont?" said Remeny.

  =Don't encourage him.= Robby was on Mom's side in this one. =Let's finish this.=

  "I was done early at the Treasure Ship shoot." Dad shook his head. "Bastards cut half of my part. So, there I am at Steve Spencer's summer place in Vermont and he pitches me an idea about how people want to do exactly what Robby is talking about.

  He's got a script ready to go and everything. Financing no problem, sixty mill starter money he says. Sixty million dollars kind of gets my attention. The idea is that there are people who want to live in virtual reality...."

  Remeny raised her hand to correct him. "Softtime."

  "Sure. And they never want to come out. It's wild stuff. They're cutting off arms and legs and whatever, body parts they claim they don't need and I say it sounds like horror, which isn't what I do, but Steve says no. The script plays it straight. It's a damned issue piece! Apparently there are people who believe this is a good thing. People who can raise sixty million no problem. Do you know about this, Rachel?"