Upgraded

by Peter Watts

  “That console,” she jerked her chin in the direction of the old-fashioned stationary terminal just inside the door. “It’s linked, isn’t it? It’s secure?”

  His eyes slid away from hers. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” his voice just a bit too high, “it’s an old reservation system. Damn hotel ought to upgrade if you ask me.”

  “Right,” she said, dropping her hand. “Can I use it? I just need to call my sister.”

  “The Imperial always assists preferred clients,” he said, and opened the door to let her through. Quick, precise strides took him to the terminal, and he keyed in an access code. A digital timer popped up on the screen. “You’ve got five minutes,” he said, and stepped away from the console.

  She pulled the access wire from her wrist and plugged it into the machine via an adaptor set into the side—slow but effective. Digit, check the connection.

  Peripherally she felt the PDA swimming into the console, lighting up its insides, checking here, there, everywhere. Connection secure, it said. She let go a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding, half expecting to hear the Samurai’s voice, or worse.

  She touched the glass screen and called up a video link. When it asked for an address, she gave it the name from the sec card, then held her breath again while it connected.

  A face appeared on the screen, one that was certainly not Chantilly Lace, belonging as it did more in a suburb than down Below. Mercury marshaled her expression into an appropriate pattern—relief (that was easy), embarrassment, I’m lost, could you please send train fare. Then, through the link: Chantilly Lace? I have your link from the Seamstress.

  Letters printed across her eye, relayed by the adaptor. We know who you are. Everyone does. It’s a liability.

  Look, I need your help, Mercury sent, the first withdrawal shadows dancing in front of her eyes. The admission stabbed at her. If I get picked up, I take about fifty different street techs to Moderna. They could be yours instead.

  The image paused. You haven’t got anything we could want. The pause was question enough to seize upon.

  You know Lupercalia?

  Of course.

  They’ve got a new navigator. She took a risk and jacked the Samurai’s prism into her wrist drive again, sending across only the view-me to Chantilly.

  The soccer mom avatar’s eyes widened ever so slightly as she played the navigator’s show-off file. This thing’s for real? Mercury nodded, but pantomimed more embarrassment, as if being chastened. Chantilly’s eyes sharpened again. But if Moderna’s got it, they’ll execute faster than we could anyway.

  She was right. Despair surged through Mercury, but she bore down on it. Say they couldn’t, she sent. What would it be worth to you?

  Enough, Chantilly said, and hope fluttered in her chest, or maybe it was adrenaline.

  The minute marker dropped toward one, counting down the seconds. I’ll need you to come in there and get me, she sent, rushing through it, trying not to think about what that meant.

  No promises, Chantilly replied, and cut the connection.

  Mercury gripped the console as precious seconds trickled away, then let her forehead drop, meeting the cool glass screen with a dull thud that echoed through her skull. Then she withdrew her prism and deactivated the console’s link, returning it to its normal emergency-services-only public access.

  Ordinarily the emergency terminals contacted rescue services only, but an old high school hobby of her cohorts’ had been co-opting them for various age-appropriate activities, some of which were now technically illegal. And one of them, involving cutting power to the terminal and loading it up under the influence of an OS from her pocket drive (thank goodness for the morning’s high tech vanity), still worked. The terminal’s link had to be reloaded, and then she was in.

  A couple of quick taps to the aging touchscreen brought up Safari, and she first searched out HealthMonitor overrides in the newsblasts—but indirectly only. She didn’t dare apply direct search terms, since, in the absence of her wireless signal, hardline terminals were obvious targets for such a narrow search.

  Chills wracked her body, and yet she broke out in a sweat, exacerbating them. Her hands shook as they hovered over the terminal, sliding closer to direct terms as each of her indirect efforts failed and time slipped away. Soon she was gripping the sides of the terminal for support with one hand and navigating with the other.

  There had to be a hack. There was always a hack. HealthMonitors were, by necessity, nearly impossible to break into, but someone had done it, which meant someone else could do it. Simple logic of the signal. Recklessly she installed three different possible applications onto her hardware, but to no effect. Patches of darkness swam in front of her eyes, but she fought to stay awake. The minute she lost consciousness, Moderna’s emergency beacon would activate, overriding her wireless shutdown and announcing her presence to all and sundry.

  At last she went for the direct search—HealthMonitor. Override. Insulin release. A result flickered across the aging screen. As blackness collapsed her vision from the outside in, and she slumped to the concrete, a system message leapt up on the terminal screen:

  > Hello, Jennifer.

  > Stay right there. Or don’t. We’ll find you.

  She woke in a white room. Soft water sounds pattered soothing messages from beyond the alabaster walls, and the gleaming granite floors that extended meters in every direction were either bioreflective, scrubbed daily, or both. Extravagant and rare staghorn ferns splashed elegant color in one corner of the room, and both the couch she rested on and the blanket that covered her were plush albino buffalo wool.

  Unfamiliar scents drifted from her hair, which by its feel had been washed, dyed, and styled. Her fingernails had been nouveau-manicured. Gone was her rugged vat leather jacket and cacophonous viz; in their places were imported cottons and biz-stylish whiteware, even down to her optics, which had been replaced with brand-new ten-K Centurions.

  She forced herself to keep still, and closed her eyes. Digit, if you’re there, bring us back online. No point hiding now. But cloaked, please.

  A murmur of voices swelled gently as her signal reconnected. She left all the apps off, but pulled top headlines from a newsfeed, stomach sinking as they rolled in. “Moderna Inc. Maven Candice Long Reunites with Long-Lost Daughter”, “Anastasia Story Has Happy Ending”, “Jennifer Long Found After 11-Year Disappearance”, “JL Suffering Memory Loss, Doctors Predict Slow Recovery.” She dismissed the headlines and opened her eyes, preferring even this meat reality to the current live alternative.

  But as she took in the sanitized room, fury shot through her veins. Digit, queue up the usual. The PDA exploded across the lifespace with fingers of activity, running scripts that pulled from syndicated sources and reorganized them under Mercury’s viz-style for re-syndication. Under the cover of her usual blast and the pull from the news feeds, she pulled up her AP contact and started a message.

  Moderna under investigation for code theft. SEC, whole nine yards. Major release planned to pre-empt investigation, Anastasia circus same. I have it from the inside, top level. She attached three sources that would take even the most intrepid reporter on an epic goose chase. Then she released the link.

  A glass pocket door rolled silently open across the room, and Mercury’s mother walked through it, as fresh and polished as her viz images from the newsreels, and as she had been fifteen years ago. “Welcome home, Jennifer,” she said—the voice was a little different; a new mod, or maybe her own faulty meat memory. “I see you’re awake enough to uplink.”

  “It’s Mercury.” She swung her legs over the side of the couch and pushed herself to her feet—or at least that was the intent, but her knees wouldn’t cooperate, and she sank back down to the buffalo wool.

  “Be careful, dear,” her mother said, moving to pour her a glass of water from the sculpted glass pitcher at the side table. “And of course, ‘Jenny Mercury,’ your street name, owing to the memory loss
.”

  She ignored the offered glass cup. “My memory is quite chipper, thanks. And digitally backed.”

  Her mother’s eyes were full of professional compassion. “Those false memory companies are a dime a dozen these days, aren’t they? But of course the truth that the masses uncover is what really matters, and they already like mine far more than yours. It’s the perfect Anastasia story, playing out live via feed, with several tech firsts to carry it right along.”

  “Why are you doing this?” She forced her fists to unclench. “Why now? Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  “Because I need you, and you’ll be happier on my project than with that silly consulting.” Mother set down the glass of water and poured another, this for herself, and sipped it pointedly.

  “You’re so confident of that you hacked my HealthMonitor. Which is illegal, by the way.”

  “Not when one’s child is mentally unfit to be making their own decisions. I’m protecting you.” Her identically manicured fingernails drummed musically along the glass, and she leaned forward ever-so-slightly. “We’re acquiring Lupercalia. That navigator is the real thing, and it goes public tomorrow. It’s big social, honey,” she said. “It’s what you’ve always wanted.”

  “You have no idea what I’ve ever wanted.” Digit, call for help, if you can. But the PDA was unresponsive.

  A faint line across her lava-exfoliated forehead was one of the few tells Candice Long possessed. “All of your little SEO games, what do you think that is? You want to control people every bit as much as I do. Maybe even more.”

  “We are alike, that way, you’re right,” Mercury said, and had the pleasure of catching the slight flattening of expression that represented surprise in her mother. “I try to control my social environment because I’ve never had control over my own life.”

  A sharp answer burned across her mother’s eyes, but the sliding door stopped it from escaping further. Enter the Samurai.

  “Afternoon, ma’am,” he said to her mother, then turned to her. “Jennifer, welcome.”

  “Those contacts,” Mercury said.

  “Yeah?” the Samurai grinned.

  “I’m going to tell them you’re a dick.”

  The grin fell from his face, replaced by a snarl she kicked herself for not seeing days ago, and he lifted a syringe filled with amber liquid from a case at his side.

  She could guess what it was, but right at that moment, the far left wall in all its fine imported stone glory shattered inward with a concussive blast that threw them all to the floor. When Mercury shook off the daze, she lifted her head just in time to catch sight of a genuine blonde bombshell stepping across the rubble. A blinking red indicator on her optics, keyed to the property security, indicated the activation of the silent alarm system, and showed the blinking dots of the security team streaming steadily toward their location. She struggled to her feet, this time able to keep them by surfing on adrenaline. “You’re—”

  The woman turned and winked, a blonde curl at her temple bouncing with the theater of her movement. “Chantilly Lace.” Indeed she was covered in it, of the new rayon-stretch type, stitched around a black utility harness hung with several weapons and a blue-and-white cheque miniskirt complete with carbon suspension (for that extra oomph) and ammunition pockets.

  “You work for the Big Bopper.” The 50s gang. Sixer gateways.

  Chantilly raised her firearm and sighted along the barrel, pulsing a droplet of laser light across three of the marble columns with a thumb release. “I know what he likes.” She fired three precise shots in quick succession, and laughed in girlish delight as the shattered column sections brought down their Corinthian heads and much of the upper floor with them in a thunder of stone and dust. Different, the Seamstress had said.

  “How did you find me?” Her mother and the Samurai were both recovering consciousness, groggily lifting their heads. Mercury ducked over to the latter and relieved him of the stainless steel medical case at his side.

  The blonde Eris blinked at her in surprise and caution. “You called me, and sent a location.”

  My doing, Digit interrupted, and Mercury stared. “Your doing?”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry—” Mercury stuttered. You . . . what? Digit? What are you?

  Slightly more than a PDA. Her head swam.

  “Come on,” Chantilly was saying. “A hit this big draws heat.”

  Mercury ducked over to her mother, who was groggily rubbing her temples. The flash of vulnerable hope in her eyes cut through Mercury, but a reminder of the past day’s misdeeds burned it away. She picked up Candice’s wrist, connected their drives with a jump-cable. A password prompt: she entered “macydaisy,” the pet poodle that had run away when she was five—and the *plink* of security approval gave her heart another pang. Seconds later, she’d transferred the Moderna HealthMonitor hack across and instructed it to release estradiol sufficient to generate a nice PMS zap. Then she accessed her cosmetic mod and turned her eyeshadow electric green and her eyelashes metallic purple.

  Mercury looked into her mother’s fluorescent eyes. “You need to change your password,” she said.

  “Seriously,” Chantilly barked, firing blue blasts of light up the passage. “Now or never.”

  “All right,” Mercury concentrated on following the plausibly insane sixer hitwoman as she ran through the white hallways, trying to focus. Digit. You pretended to be a PDA all this time . . . how could you stand it?

  I did a lot of wiki surfing. Your cultural studies course didn’t cover that part of the lower city, by the way.

  Chantilly Lace’s blonde ponytail bounced steadily in front of them, and in short order she’d expertly navigated them out to the north gardens, onto a swathe of imported blue-green Japanese-engineered grass. Where did you come from? What’s your classification?

  Digit answered the second question first, as a helicopter arrowed toward them from the south: Currently three, but my makers think I’d qualify for four eventually, he? she? it? said, and Mercury found herself dizzy again. Then: Your mother installed me when you were two. She thought if you didn’t grow up augmented you’d be stunted.

  My mother planted you? Chantilly Lace had pulled a micro-jet pack from a pouch and was fitting canisters to it, then swinging it across her shoulders and looping an arm around Mercury’s waist. “Wait!” Mercury yelled over the now-deafening roar of the helicopter a hundred meters above them. Digit, what the fuck?

  “There’s no waiting, sweetheart!” Chantilly yelled back, but Mercury struggled against her grip. “You wait, you stay!”

  She installed me, she doesn’t control me, Digit said, and if Mercury assumed Digit was human she’d say there was hurt in the words.

  And how the hell do I know you don’t want to control me yourself, hiding all this time? Chantilly Lace was backing away, shaking her head at Mercury in disgust. She ignited the jet pack.

  Because I want you to make your own decisions. I want to stay with you. Behind them, boiling up from the smoking property, the scarred alabaster, shouting men with weapons painted them with laser sightings.

  Tears stung her eyes, new and bewildering, the first since not long after she’d taken off from this compound for the first time, a furious seventeen-year-old with way too much livesocial integration for her own good. “All right!” she yelled, and ran for Chantilly, who happily kicked her in the chest from an early-launch altitude of about a meter and a half. Mercury clung to the stiletto-heeled boot and closed her eyes.

  Scant moments later, she was sitting in between Chantilly Lace and a guy in a thermapolyester zoot suit with a pair of implanted mechanical eyes. He reached out with a sidearm to rain covering fire down on Moderna’s security guards, and the helicopter rose above the city. After a few parting shots he retracted his arm and sealed the windows, delivering beatific silence to the cabin, or close enough.

  “Pretender, meet Jenny Mercury,” Chantilly Lace said, gesturing between them. The cyb
er-eyed guy nodded, but Chantilly was already leaning back toward Mercury. “Hey, are you going to get your chip swapped? It’s the only way they wouldn’t be able to trace you again. The Bopper wants that Lupercalia thing you’ve got, and he’d probably chip you in exchange for it.” Her thick-lashed blue eyes were disturbingly bright, highlighted by chartreuse biolume.

  “No,” Mercury said, flipping open the medical kit to examine the formula her mother’d concocted. “I think I’ll go back to Jennifer Long. It’s about time someone showed my mother what ‘big social’ really means.”

  “I like how you think!” Chantilly laughed, sweet and infectious as cotton candy.

  So do I, Digit said.

  Thanks, Mercury said. She looked around, keenly aware of the stolen technology that buzzed all around them. But the network, when you didn’t hide from it, might have a few things to say about sixers, too. “Where are we going?”

  “Deep,” Chantilly said, pointing with her still-equipped destruction gun to the eastern sky. “I saw that AP story just before I broke in. The SEC’s scrambling already. Fucking brilliant. You in?”

  What do you think? she asked Digit, and felt, quite distinctly, a pulse of surprise—he’d opened an emotion-share channel. Then, pleasure. Gratitude.

  I’m in, he said, kicking a few deliciously clever network options across her optics. She smiled.

  “We’re in.”

  Coastlines of the Stars

  Alex Dally MacFarlane

  THE FIRST MAPS

  It was a late interest: after childhood, after fleeting interests that sank into me like teeth—then fell away. Foxes stayed. I tried poetry. I fell into history. I found maps there.

  I approached it cautiously, like a new food.

  I couldn’t say why it interested me.

  The first maps were other people’s: old maps, in prose and pictures. I collected them, compared them. I described their meanings: here, home; here, discomfort; here, longing; here, the coastline. Only later did I make my own.

  Ngọc stood in the main shuttle terminal at Al Qasr, waiting for the next shuttle to Goldchair Space Station. Minutes took too long. Crowded, loud, too much. People everywhere: talking, shouting, signing, bumping into her, waiting by her. Unfiltered announcements. Smells from the food stands, from people. Banners in every color, scrolling across screens on the walls and floating above the halls: directing people to the right shuttle slots, displaying news, advertising.