Mohan knew where the key was.
He wasn’t a kid any more. He knew how to pilot the skimmer boat, knew how to navigate the docks, knew right where the floats were.
Why did his father bother hiding the skimmer key, he wondered, if he wasn’t going to try harder than the top kitchen cabinet where he used to hide confiscated candy?
Mohan stood in the bathroom, staring at the mirror, letting his favourite filters scroll. He’d been trying a hair-in-front-of-his-eyes thing and it was almost working.
His friends wanted to chill on the floats for the supermoon. It would be beautiful, the strawberry moon rising on the horizon, the float lighting the five of them softly from below. Amsel had suggested it and Mohan could make it happen.
Taking the skimmer, though … it was so forbidden that his father had never explicitly told him not to. But if Mohan worked it right, his father wouldn’t find out. Tomorrow was going to be sunny, so the batteries on the boat would recharge before anyone noticed they’d been used. But there was something else Mohan would have to do if he was really going to bring his friends out to the floats – something he’d never done; something he wasn’t sure he could.
“Sargent?”
A cougar in a Napoleonic uniform appeared beside him.
“Yes, Capitaine!” Sargent’s paws gripped his bayoneted rifle tightly to his side. The fur along the broad ridge of his nose glistened as if just slightly damp. His epaulets looked a little scuffed. Sargent’s uniform had been scanned straight from a museum. It looked like Sargent had been through a battle, but every button and braided tassel was still perfectly in place. Sargent was proper like that.
“At ease,” Mohan said.
“Thank you, sir!”
Mohan had spent days tweaking Sargent’s build. His first effort at a monitor – a platypus in a top hat – had annoyed him, so he’d scrapped it and started over. Sometimes he let Sargent choose his own uniform, cycling through tuxedos or scuba gear, but the brass buttons and blue-shag of his shako were his best look.
In the beginning Sargent had been stiff, speaking only in short, obedient phrases. But he’d grown into his personality quickly. Even his friends said that Mohan’s monitor was more alive than theirs. Lots of kids didn’t put much effort into skinning their monitors. Mohan couldn’t understand that. If you’re going to have someone watching over your shoulder all the time, you might as well like the way they look and act.
“If I may say so, Capitaine, you’re looking splendid.” Sargent nodded in admiration. “Going out?”
“I’m turning off augmented reality for the supermoon tonight. I want to see it with my own eyes.”
“An excellent idea, sir.”
“Turning off location data as well,” Mohan said, leaning towards the mirror so he wouldn’t have to look Sargent in the eyes.
“If you say so, sir. This is the closest the moon will be to Earth for three years. No fog or clouds. It should be spectacular. Where will you be watching from?”
“That’s my business.”
“Yes, sir! I assume you have the oversight key? Please enter it now, biochip verification too, please. Thank you, sir! Second party location monitoring will be blind for twenty-four hours, starting now. As you might recall, passive monitoring of your position and wellbeing cannot be turned off. All data collected will be processed in a closed loop. If, however, I deem that you are in danger, I am obligated to alert your father to your location and condition, as well as any emergency services.”
“I know.” Mohan sighed. He had reviewed Sargent’s handbook very carefully last night. He’d been looking for a loophole, something less drastic than what he was going to have to do. He hadn’t found one.
Nothing about Sargent had changed, but suddenly, to Mohan, his monitor looked like a child’s toy: a holiday nutcracker, or a custom-made teddy bear. Even the spelling of his name was naive.
Mohan twisted a lock into a tighter curl. His hair had got long enough to hang vesh over his forehead – the only problem was, it kept poking him in the eye. He twisted again and tugged it down. The last thing he needed was Amsel thinking he had pink-eye. This wasn’t something he trusted a filter to fix, and anyway, if they were really going off AR, Mohan would be basically naked. Nothing to make him look better but moonlight.
In truth, Mohan wasn’t really excited about the moon. He could remember what it had looked like before he got his augmented reality kit. It was hard to imagine that pale dot inspiring so much poetry before AR was invented, but, Mohan figured, people did their best with what they had. Now he could zoom in close enough to see the lunar landers. He could make the moon laugh, deliver a lecture if he wanted to, or turn it into a spinning football.
The unfiltered supermoon was just an excuse to do something truly vesh with his friends. Something unforgettable with Amsel.
The floats were the pride of the city. Everyone knew how they worked. Every year, primary school kids made models out of egg cartons showing how the rising ocean buoyed the rectangular platforms, pulling tethers that spun the power generators. There were three floats a quarter of a mile off the beach. Anchored to the sea bed, they generated more than enough electricity for the entire city, year-round, rain or shine. Each float was the size of a football pitch. Mohan had actually played football on them. Or, at least, he’d kicked the AR ball around as his father’s team inspected the chains. The tethers were supposed to last a hundred years, but they were already being pitted by some plankton that had figured out how to metabolize fullerene. It was happening all over the world, tiny sea-bugs chomping micro fractures into the carbon fibre. There was even talk about replacing all of the tethers with vat-silk or even old-fashioned stainless-steel chains.
But no one else had a key to the boat that would disable the floats’ alarms. No other kid knew where the access ladders were. No one but Mohan could make this happen. And it had to happen tonight – not just because of the moon. Amsel had been talking about transferring schools.
Zer parents were pushing for an astro-engineering track in a special school inland. Mohan’s crush on zer had hit him fast and sometimes felt like a fever. He went to sleep and woke thinking about zer laugh. Tonight might be his last chance. If things went right, maybe he could convince zer to stay.
Mohan wasn’t even sure if Amsel liked him that way; if Amsel even liked boys. At the school camp-in event, Amsel had unrolled zer sleeping bag right next to Mohan’s under the gymnasium bleachers. But no one had used sleeping bags anyway. His memory of that night was a strobe of ear-ringing music, dodgeball, too many cheap doughnuts, and dance contests. They’d all got the stomach flu the next day.
That evening had been the first time Mohan had noticed how Amsel’s jaw curved up to zer earlobe. How zer eyes shut tight when ze laughed. The next day they’d bantered over text about whether a doughnut could give you the runs.
Would they swim at the floats tonight? It would be crampingly cold…
“Permission to cut the crap, Mohan?”
Mohan blinked at Sargent.
“What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
“Uh, permission granted?” Sargent had never spoken to him this way before.
Sargent set his rifle against the towel rack and crossed his arms.
“I access your texts,” Sargent said. “I know you’re planning to go to the floats. As the child of a float engineer, you should know that a supermoon increases tidal rise significantly. Great for power generation, but rather dangerous for boating, especially intoxicated night boating. Big waves.”
Of course, Mohan had never been to the floats at night. But he was sure that once they got there, they’d be plenty safe. There were dim solar lights all around the perimeter. Mood lighting, and room enough for Amsel and Mohan to take a little stroll away from the others maybe. He was hoping for a kiss but would be happy just to hold zer hand.
“I won’t be intoxicated,” Mohan told Sargent.
“Of course, I can’t alert your father about something you might do,” Sargent went on. “I have to wait until you do it. But that’s what confuses me. You know I will.”
“Will what?”
“I will alert your father and probably the coastguard the minute the skimmer leaves the dock. You won’t even make it to the float.”
Sargent’s concern had creased the fur between his eyebrows. Mohan could almost see him thinking, his machine-mind shredding through probable scenarios, trying to put guard rails around Mohan’s near future. But Mohan was about to do something Sargent would never expect. Mohan himself was still not sure if he could pull it off. Now would be the time to do it. Right now.
As Mohan hesitated, a snail crawled out of Sargent’s pocket. This was new. Its shell had a faintly metallic sheen and its gummy antennae swayed as it inched up to perch on Sargent’s shoulder. Mohan had an impulse to say “hello”, to see if the snail would talk, but it was already after six. Moonrise was seven thirty-five. Mohan was running out of time.
“Are you trying to slow me down?”
“Of course I am.” Sargent couldn’t lie. Mohan wished everyone was that way.
“Why are you talking like this?”
“You want me to say ‘sir’ and ‘Capitaine’? You aren’t a kid any more.”
It was eerie when Sargent read his mind. Mohan held still, watching his monitor, a vividly realistic carnivore in a historic soldier’s uniform. The app must have updated recently. It was doing it all the time to keep up with malware, apps, with Mohan’s own behaviour. But Sargent had never just dropped out of character like this before.
Mohan realized he was afraid – not of Sargent, exactly, but of drifting out into open water. Sargent had guessed he was going to make a move and the monitor was trying to adapt, trying to evolve fast enough to catch him. Mohan hadn’t even done the thing and already, just like that, his monitor, his most reliable friend, had changed.
Everyone under sixteen had a monitor of some kind, though often it was nothing more than a nagging alert or invisible fence. Sargent was more expensive and more intrusive than most other monitors. It had been Mohan’s father’s compromise on his twelfth birthday, three years ago. Mohan would get the AR kit so he could socialize with his peers, go to parties, play games, wear filters like a normal kid. In return, his father could rest assured that his only son would not be blinded or lobotomized by a toxic app. Sargent would be watching out for hackers, creepers and all the rest.
Mohan’s dad had been so busy with the tether problem – gone for days at conferences – that Sargent had become like family. He’d find good tunes or bluresque realplays for Mohan to listen to while he made his own dinners.
Even when he was home, Mohan’s dad was usually holed up in his office, using that clunky projector to visualize the carbon chains his team was trying to save. Mohan had watched from the doorway as they rotated and flexed the geodesic molecules. The other engineers took the piss out of his dad for using old projectors and laptops, but his father didn’t trust AR. To access Sargent, though, his father had agreed to a projector threaded into his glasses so he could talk to the monitor if necessary, or have Mohan’s location light up like a waypoint in an emergency.
For a moment, Mohan had a frightening vision of his father standing on the float looking down into the deep, with Mohan’s faint red dot sinking below.
No, Mohan would be careful.
Until this moment, Sargent had always seemed like Mohan’s younger sibling, eager to play whatever Mohan was into. But this felt different.
Did Sargent know? Had he guessed how Mohan planned to break out of his surveillance?
Suddenly Mohan felt like he might cry.
“I don’t feel pain, Capitaine,” Sargent said gently.
Mohan gasped. “Why did you say that?”
“Because your emotional wellbeing is as much my concern as your physical safety. I’m not sure what you’re planning, but you need to know that nothing will cause me pain. I know you’re not cruel, and whatever you’re about to do won’t change that. You don’t have to worry about killing me. I am not alive. I’m not afraid. You’re a good person, really a kind-hearted and creative kid. You’re better than most.”
“Stop it.”
“I know you rather well by now. You may not believe these things when your father says them, but maybe you’ll believe me. And, in the event that I don’t get to say—”
“I’m not going to kill you!”
“Then what are you going to do?”
Mohan opened the file and it appeared on the bathroom counter. It looked like a dim sum dumpling, filled almost to bursting and steaming ominously next to the sink. It filled the bathroom with a rich aroma of shrimp, garlic and ginger.
“I’m to eat that?” Sargent asked.
“It’s safe. I think it’s safe. Shuli ran it on her monitor and it’s fine.”
“Shuli’s monitor is a howling, gore-soaked clown.”
“Jumbles was always a blood-stained clown,” Mohan said.
“Where did you get this little treat?”
“… Waterdeep.”
Sargent’s ears flattened against his skull. He closed his eyes as if to swallow a very bitter truth. The ebon streaks around his eyes met like a Pharaoh’s eyeliner. Mohan had not felt so ashamed in years.
“I mean Shuli got it. But she says – she swears – it’s clean. She’s a good hacker.”
“She gave it to you at the cafe last week, didn’t she?” Sargent asked. Nothing got past him.
It had been raining hard enough for the drops to come in sideways under the awning that night, pattering against the cafe window. Monkey-faced AR mermaids knocked around the boba in Shuli’s tea. Her monitor, Jumbles, danced furiously in the rain outside, while Sargent stood to attention near the restrooms.
Shuli had asked for privacy, so their monitors had to keep a distance and ignore anything shared. But files were still supposed to be screened. Whatever was inside the little paper box on the table between them was steaming and Mohan half expected Sargent to lunge for it in savage intercept mode.
Once, Mohan had tried to download a coupon from a glitchy street kiosk and Sargent had shot it out of his hand. With his rifle still smoking, Sargent had said, “There’s a reason that file was free.”
“It’s safe,” Shuli had whispered in the cafe, chewing on a boba. “It’s armoured. The monitors can’t even see it.”
And sure enough, when Mohan accepted the file, Sargent hadn’t even looked his way.
The cafe had been full of people sheltering from the downpour but only Mohan and Shuli could see Sargent, Jumbles, the file, and the mer-monkeys dodging Shuli’s straw. The two of them had a shared AR link so they each saw what the other saw.
Of course, Mohan was curious about what the other patrons were experiencing. Was that old woman sharing her table with an AR version of her husband’s ghost? Was that bobbing barista surrounded by bluresque dancers only he could see?
Kids bragged about accidentally seeing some stranger’s traumatizing AR content on the bus, or spilling from an apartment window, but Sargent would never let some perv’s posts slop into Mohan’s feed. There was no tunnelling malware, no glitch, no urgent update Sargent missed. Mohan’s father was cheap when it came to clothes and cars, but he had spared no expense on Sargent. Shuli wasn’t the only kid who knew her monitor’s access codes better than her parents. But getting around Sargent wasn’t that easy. Mohan hoped it wouldn’t be too messy.
“Shuli is careful,” Mohan said now, praying it was true. “And, if you want, you could … can you look at it … scan it, and tell me what you think?”
Sargent nudged the dim sum with an extended claw. The crimped edge of the dumpling yielded, perfectly steamed. Just before his claw punctured the glistening skin, Sargent pulled his paw back.
“I’d like to.” Sargent sniffed. “But I can’t collude with you to compromise my essential functions. Helping you get your poison right counts as collusion, I’d say.”
“Right. Of course.”
“And you’re all going to disable your monitors this way?”
“Jeremy doesn’t have a monitor, but yes, the rest of us. Just for a few hours. Just to look at the moon.”
“A few hours on the open ocean with beer, cannabix, teenage impulse control, dark water and record high waves.”
“I can’t be watched all the time. That’s not life, that’s prison.”
They both stared at the dumpling. Someone had spent a long time on this rendering. The contents, dark and chunky, could almost be seen through the opaque dough. And it smelled delicious enough for Mohan’s stomach to growl. To get to the docks in time, he’d have to skip dinner.
“Even if no one drowns, one way or another, your father will probably find out about this,” Sargent said.
“I know, but…” Mohan wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence. How do you explain to a being that only knows rules, only knows safety, that you have every intention of turning a very bad idea into something beautiful? “Do you know who Amsel is?”
Sargent nodded without even looking at Mohan, as if he knew very well who Amsel was. “Flotation vests, for all of you,” he said. “The whole time.”
“OK. Yes. I promise.”
“Amsel is kind. And funny.”
Sargent picked up the dumpling between two claws, wrinkling his nose as if it were a dirty sock.
Mohan waited, his throat tight. What he had not told Sargent was that Shuli’s monitor had come back speaking gibberish for hours, and then seemed to think the couch was on fire – Shuli had loved it – before returning to what seemed to be normal behaviour. But what worried Mohan most was that Jumbles had only eaten the dumpling two days ago. If there was sleeping malware…
Sargent cleared his throat. “You’ll have to force me, Mohan.”
“You’re making this harder.”
Sargent gave him a withering look. “It’s supposed to be hard! Your father installed me with the understanding that it wasn’t just hard, it was impossible.”
But it was possible. Shuli said all it took was the trigger that now appeared in Mohan’s hand. A pair of fire-engine red chopsticks.
“He only wants to protect you, you know,” Sargent said. “In that way, I’m an extension of his love.”
“Ew.”
Sargent took a deep breath, a low growl almost hidden under layers of fur and ancient wool. “Please don’t do this.”
Mohan closed his eyes and forced out the words: “Sargent, I order you to eat the dumpling.”
“Yes, Capitaine,” Sargent said.
Mohan peeked through one eye. Sargent’s mouth opened and kept opening. Mohan had never quite realized how far the jaws of a cougar could spread. The savage, yellow-marbled teeth framed great pink ridges, tongue, roof of the mouth, throat. Open and defenceless.
For a moment, Mohan was about to tell him to stop, but the dumpling had already fallen onto the back of his tongue, looking small and inconsequential.
“Sargent?”
But Sargent didn’t answer. He hadn’t swallowed the dumpling, or even closed his mouth. He was frozen, mouth still gaping, horrifically still. Like a grotesque statue.
Mohan dismissed the image with a shudder. The room dimmed as his AR flickered out. No monitor, no augmented reality.
The colours of the towels, of the soap, of his own cheeks, were dull. There were shadows under his eyes. A crack in the ceiling he’d never seen before. His T-shirt, just seconds ago vesh as hell, now hung off his narrow shoulders like a dumb green sack. A strafing of acne crossed his forehead.
Almost seven. Time to go. Mohan felt cold already. Alone. He leaned closer to his reflection. His hair was hanging, just right, before one eye. The other eye was wide, the full circle of the iris hanging in its small, bright sky.