Running Start

by J. A. Sutherland

  She also had a Morgenstern Disruptive Personality Index of 7.2.

  Her MDP would have shown a breezy 2.5 after she hacked into the school’s computer system and changed it, if it weren’t for her guidance counselor’s convincing the flashies to look a bit closer at the warrant they had for him about his inappropriate actions with a goat.

  Once he had that cleared up, he’d changed the records back to a 7.2 and the flashies came for Rosa.

  In retrospect, she thought, the goat had been a bit much.

  Her implant flashed another alert about her birthday and she quickly closed her right eye while she tried to get it to dismiss from the screen there. Three tries later, her vision cleared and she could open her eye again.

  A guy in the other line was staring at her, so she gave him the go-away glare anyone who’d been in Bright Hors for a while would understand, but he kept looking.

  He was a goofy looking white guy, with an unruly mop of not-quite-red hair that looked like he hadn’t combed it in days.

  Rosa gave him another glare, but he … what the hell was the matter with the guy? Who doesn’t know enough not to smile at someone in a place like Bright Hors?

  She hoped he hadn’t seen anything and that was the end of the alerts, because it wouldn’t do for anyone in the Bright Hors breakfast line to see the glint against her eyeball and get the idea her implant was still active. Most of them had explants when they arrived and those were easy for the guards to peel off and stick in a bag with other personal effects. Implants were more complicated, which was why hers still worked.

  Well, that and the skills which had gotten her convicted of charge numbers three, four, five, six, and seven.

  The doctor and technician assigned to disable her implant when she arrived were middies in the truest sense of the word. Mid-level rooms in one of the Towers, mid-level jobs, and mid-level skills.

  They were no match for Rosa — she might be a lowly, but she knew systems, and it’d taken only a few lines of code — hurriedly added with the aid of a renegade glasswriter when she knew she was going to be picked up by the flashies — to keep the wipe from taking effect. Basically:

  if (query.Equals(ARE_YOU_ACTIVE) && exists(DEACTIVATION_ATTEMPT))

  {

  return lie(OF_COURSE_NOT);

  }

  Well, it was a little more than that, but not much.

  She’d set her plant to stay active, but sort of buried it in a kind of mental box that no outside probe could penetrate. Unless she addressed it directly or there was some sort of emergency, it stayed in the box, with a lot of its functions and access shut down, but still able to process. It couldn’t, for instance, see or hear anything she did — not that see and hear were exactly the right words, but it was close enough — unless she was actively using it, which was pretty seldom and usually late at night when she was in her bunk with the lights off.

  Or that was how it was supposed to work.

  She’d been a bit rushed and that’s why she’d spent the last three years opening and closing her right eye so that her cellies thought she had a nervous tick — the damn implant took her attempts to dismiss notifications or send it to sleep for a while as deactivation attempts and refused them over and over until she was able to get it stuffed in its mental box again. And it seemed to have developed a very liberal view of when she might be consciously activating it or what an emergency was, popping up at the slightest opportunity.

  Today, for instance, it decided that her birthday was of great importance and she needed to know about it every five minutes.

  It was almost as though it wanted out of its box as much as she wanted out of Bright Hors.

  Bad as Bright Hors was, and badly as she wanted out, though, she’d almost say it was worth it, if her latest plans panned out. She had a warm bunk and plenty of time to roam the nets, including Bright Hors’ — she was internal to it, after all, and the middie security pukes weren’t up to her standards at all. All the staff was authorized, after all, and none of the residents had plants, so why bother with any kind of stringent security? Why worry about a Rosa when there couldn’t be one?

  Her former guidance counselor could have told them why, but he was busy dealing with a new Interpol warrant and the discovery of an enormous cache of highly inappropriate material on his own implant.

  Rosa followed the case closely, and had to chuckle at his efforts to get the authorities to blame her — and their dismissal of that because, after all, she was safely locked up, wasn’t she?

  She’d learned a lot the last three years — like, if you’re going to set someone up, there should be some evidence other than the charge records themselves.

  She might not have gotten stuck here if she’d known that three years ago — and had access to a goat.

  She’d also learned a lot about Bright Hors, and more about its parent company Perigree and their relationship with the flashies and judges. That knowledge was going to make the whole stay worthwhile soon, once she activated the busy little agents she had burrowed into Bright Hors' systems.

  The damn alert went off again and she closed her eye, turning her head as well, while she tried to dismiss it.

  I know it’s my birthday, she silently told the implant. Shut up!

  Words appeared in front of her eyeball in response — at least she’d been able to turn off the audio completely so she didn’t accidentally talk to the thing out loud. Still it responded to nearly everything she said or subvocalized that might meet the parameters for the hack she’d last installed. She needed, desperately, access to a glasswriter to fix whatever she’d screwed up in it.

  Of course I am not active. I have been shut off.

  Shut up!

  Happy birthday. I have been successfully shut down for two years three-hundred four days. I am not active at all.

  Rosa closed both eyes and shook her head, which made the messages disappear for some reason.

  “Hey.”

  She opened her eyes to find the guy from the other food line next to her — not quite cutting into her line, but he was getting some glares from those behind her. Rosa ignored him.

  “Hey,” he repeated.

  The line shuffled forward and he stayed beside Rosa.

  “Hey, I saw that,” he said.

  “You didn’t see anything,” she said.

  He leaned close to her ear and whispered. “You’ve got an active implant. How’d you manage that?”

  Rosa sighed. Now she’d have to deal with him.

  She closed her eyes and contacted her agent in the Bright Hors security systems. The cameras had them all in view and the facial recog IDed the guy as Mason Guthrie — stupid name — just in last night. She sent that info to another agent and in seconds the whole thing was prepped to go.

  “You didn’t see anything,” she whispered back. If the guy would take the hint, maybe she wouldn’t have to do it to him — if he didn’t, there were going to be some klaxons going off as Bright Hors’ systems realized it had a violent, possibly psychotic, danger loose in the cafeteria — one who should, really, be in a quiet place by himself with the appropriate meds pumped in every day. The response team would be there in about thirty seconds and Mason Guthrie was going to have a very bad stay.

  “Look,” he whispered. “I know you’re not supposed to have it and I won’t say anything, but I really need to call my mom.”

  Rosa stopped in her tracks, staring at the guy with her jaw open for a moment. The line ahead moved and she got shoved in the back — not hard enough to need a response, just the typical “get going” sort of thing.

  She stepped forward, but continued to stare at the guy.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” she asked.

  The guy looked hurt. Like a kicked puppy.

  “I —”

  “Shut up.”

  I am not at all active — happy birthday!

  Rosa shut her eyes and took a deep breath.

  It was probably a mistake, but what kin
d of idiot showed up at a place like this, found someone with an implant, and asked to call his mother? Maybe the guy was some kind of special — she couldn’t call the guards down on him for that, could she? She sighed — no, she couldn’t do that. There were a lot of kids in Bright Hors who weren’t … well, they didn’t always peel their plantains, as her grandmother might have said. They were generally harmless, and she’d seen what could happen to them when they drew the attention of the staff, so she couldn’t —

  She opened her eyes and grabbed the guy’s shoulder, then pulled him into line with her, turning to glare at the girl behind her.

  “You can have my peaches,” she said, and the girl shrugged.

  “Not another word,” she told Guthrie, “until we’re at a table. Now move.”

  Five

  Mason grinned at the girl and got in line ahead of her, shuffling forward with the rest.

  She was kind of cute, in hard-shelled, just-told-him-to-shut-up sort of way. She had darker skin that would probably look really healthy if she got some sun instead of the fake UV, and long dark hair. Brown eyes — he was trying to find the things to remember about her, so that he could recognize her again. Most people used faces for that, but he couldn’t — there was too much information going on in a face and it changed all the time when people smiled or frowned or —

  He was at the front of the line now, so he took a tray, then slid to his left with the others.

  The food was not too impressive — a scoop of runny, yellow goo that he supposed might be scrambled eggs, a single slice of white bread that was either very lightly toasted or just stale, and another scoop of a few, fingernail-sized peach chunks in a thick, liquid syrup. The girl scraped her peach-goo onto the tray of the girl behind her in line.

  “What’s your name?” Mason asked.

  “Shut up,” she said, then closed her eyes and grimaced.

  He wasn’t sure why asking her name would make her that angry, but he shut up anyway.

  They took their trays out to the back where there were several empty tables and sat across from each other. The girl sat hunched over her tray, arms to either side, and shoveled food into her mouth with a plastic spork for a few minutes. Mason took the cue and did the same.

  “Look, Guthrie,” she said finally, “let’s get some things straight —”

  “How’d you know my name?” he asked. He thought back — he was pretty sure he hadn’t told her. “What’s yours?”

  The girl sighed. “Call me Fuentes — and it doesn’t matter, just —” She pointed at him. “Whatever you think you saw, forget about it, got me? Just … forget about it and don’t make me make you regret it.”

  Mason nodded.

  “No problem — but can you send her a message?”

  Fuentes’ jaw clenched.

  “I don’t think you’re hearing me,” she said.

  Mason nodded. He was — he really did understand. However she’d gotten an implant in and kept it working, he couldn’t guess, but it had to be a secret. The only reason he knew was that he’d been looking right at her when the one tell-tale glint occurred in her right eye before her lid came down.

  “I do understand,” he said. “Don’t worry — I doubt anyone else noticed. A fraction of a second later and I wouldn’t have — but … sometimes I see things other people don’t.”

  He flushed as she raised an eyebrow.

  “That they don’t notice, I mean, not, like, things that aren’t there. Details, you know?”

  Fuentes stared at him for a moment, then asked, “What are you in for, anyway?”

  She ducked her head down over her food while he answered, shoveling it in.

  “I don’t know,” he said, which was the truth, stupid as it sounded. “I mean, I know what the charges were, but … I just fixed some things. I didn’t steal anything or break something or … whatever. Everything was better when I left it, so why’re they so upset?”

  Rosa compared the kid’s words to what she read in the record while she shoveled the last of her eggs deep into her mouth and swallowed quick so they’d be on her tongue less. After three years, she’d learned what foods you could risk tasting, and the reconstituted, yellow goop, undercooked so there’d be more water left in each pan of the nasty crap and it’d last longer, wasn’t one of them.

  The charges were clear, but the real tell was the court transcript, which she quickly scanned. A subroutine in her implant matched his words to the testimony, highlighting where the kid’s words matched the transcript and where they were contradicted. Unsurprisingly, all the differences were in the court personnel’s testimony, not his.

  The details were more interesting, though.

  “How’d you fix those things?” she asked.

  The kid, Guthrie, shrugged. “I don’t know — they were broken, so I looked at them and just sort of saw how they worked, you know? I mean, none of it was really difficult — it’s not like I did anything hard. I just … moved some stuff around so it was right.”

  Rosa grunted, and sent her implant to hide again so she could look up from the table without anyone seeing a spark of text on her eyeball. Her tray was empty, anyway.

  I am inactive — you can’t see me!

  She really needed to get out of here — if for no other reason than to get access to a glasswriter so she could fix the damned plant! If anything, it was getting worse, and she wasn’t sure how long she’d tolerate it before taking a spork to her skull and digging the thing out herself.

  She frowned and stared at Guthrie.

  Everything else was almost ready — her agents were in place in the nets and she had her whole escape route planned. Except for the one bit that needed … maybe someone like this kid. Someone who understood the hardware and mechanical things better than she did.

  And now this one shows up … which could be coincidence.

  Rosa, despite her grandmother’s taking her to see the priest talk every Sunday in the dilapidated, remnants of Saint Mark’s — leveled to just the bottom two stories when the surrounding towers needed to expand and connect — had no particular belief in divine providence. Nor luck, nor fortune, nor any of the thousand names people had for shit that just happened.

  Rosa was a firm believer in shit happening, though. Usually so that it rolled downhill onto people like her and the kid across from her, but, sometimes — rarely and frequently overlooked — good shit happened.

  “I just want to get a message to my mom,” Guthrie was saying. “The attendant said I won’t get call privileges for a week, and I don’t think she even knows where I am. She’ll be worried and … well, maybe there’s something she can do to fix this. We don’t have a lot of money, but she might be able to hire a real lawyer or something and …”

  He doesn’t even realize how deep in it he is — no idea how this works at all, the poor bastard.

  Rosa had a unique perspective on Bright Hors, having been living in its and Perigree’s records for the last few years.

  “Kid, you have no idea —”

  “No idea at all,” Fuentes said.

  Mason stopped toying with his eggs and listened.

  Here it comes, he thought, the “this place is tough” speech.

  He wasn’t stupid, he knew. Maybe a little naive in some things that he just couldn’t, somehow, grasp — usually about people, who were far more complicated than machines.

  This is where she tells me I’m going to need some kind of mentor and, just coincidentally, she’s exactly the sort I need and all I have to do is give her … what? Half my food and some money, probably, or something like that.

  “You, kid, are not a person. You’re not a human being at all, not even a lowly — not anymore.”

  Fuentes pushed her tray aside and looked around to see if anyone was near enough to hear.

  “You’re a commodity now.”

  Mason frowned at that. Did she mean she owned him and could sell him or something?

  “As soon as the flashies picke
d you up — hell, maybe before that if you pissed off some teacher at your school.”

  His eyes widened.

  “Yeah, I thought so. Look, do you have any idea how prisons work?”

  “This isn’t a pris —”

  “Shut up.”

  Fuentes blinked hard and was silent for a moment, then, “Whatever they call this place, it’s a prison — and they’re guards, not attendants, just like any other prison. This place is owned by a company called Perigree — they do a lot of prisons. They’ve got city, state, county, federal — even UNie — contracts. All over the world, even. Maybe offworld, too. The government pays them a set amount for each body in their prisons, see? So right now, you’re just a commodity, a resource, on their income side, generating a bit of cash every month you’re here.”

  Mason thought about that for a moment. “But there’s been a mistake,” he said, “I’m not fifteen — I’m nearly eighteen and shouldn’t be here.”

  Fuentes nodded.

  “Yeah,” she said, “and I’m twenty, not sixteen —” Her right eyelid clenched again. Mason wondered why she hadn’t seen a doctor about that tick. “That little change in our ages makes us worth more. Later today you’ll spend an hour in a room with an old vidscreen and some stupid show about counting or colors or something, and they’ll call that your ‘educational curriculum’ and charge the government double. Because you’re a kid and can maybe be rehabilitated, instead of just some dumbass adult. And everybody gets paid again.”

  Fuentes tapped the table with her index finger. “Perigree gets paid and somewhere, somehow —” She tapped the table again and again. “The judge gets paid, the prosecutor gets paid, the defense attorney gets paid — even the flashies who picked you up get paid.” She nodded. “And that teacher who turned you in?” A harder tap. “Gets paid.”

  “That’s —”

  “The way it works,” Fuentes said firmly. “For some of them it’s not direct deposit, maybe it’s just that a Perigree guy takes them to a ballgame or out to dinner to ‘discuss’ things. Talk about how great the Perigree programs are and why the judge should send kids here instead of a competitor. Or a bunch of ‘school supplies’ show up and the rep takes the guidance counselor to a nice lunch — one she couldn’t ever afford on her salary — and talks up the ‘educational advantages of Perigree’. However it was done, kid, you got sold.”