THE SURFACE—WESTEURO
DOVER FERRY TERMINAL
Wanting kids wasn’t so much about Anselmo burning to nurture new life—though he would defy anyone to find him saying otherwise, in any transcript. Children were good company, in limited doses, and they outgrew their appalling qualities over time.
Permission to parent was an undisputed win. Childrearing put you in an elite, unlocking social opps with other achievers. It bumped your pack within all sorts of queues. Bigger pop-ins, newer amenities, realworld experiences galore. All because children lived, largely, on the surface. You couldn’t keep them in an immersion helmet all the time.
Successful nurturers raked in the perks. Parents rated bigger fresh-vegetable rations, flexible terms on career leveling, discounts on subscriptions. They even got preferred access to high-end life extension.
With all that in mind, Anselmo felt obliged to seem a little starry-eyed as he supervised the herd of sweaty adolescents mobbing the canteen.
The kids were a best-and-brightest cohort, sponsored by innovation companies looking to make their quota of good deeds. Rubi Whiting’s kind of people. The superschool was headed to old Oxford, to compete in a hard lab, practicing engineering skills.
They didn’t act like the intellectual cream. They were as Anselmo imagined wild animals might be: rank, shouty, and overstimulated. The eldest were on the hunt for sex, and that tension pressurized the room, countering the weather system battering the outer walls. Many of the rest appeared to be on high alert in case Rubi Whiting turned up.
Anselmo wouldn’t mind being stuck in Dover if enforced togetherness let him build a connection with Rubi. The Beijing couple he’d been flirting with was definitely interested in recruiting a famous performance gamer. They had even seemed intrigued by the idea of a connection with her father.
But instead of Rubi he had this feral herd, with their typical callow questions—
“You ever seen a dead body?”
“Have you worked a murder?”
“Hardly anyone gets murdered anymore,” he said.
“What’s in your holster? A gun?”
“It’s my gaming baton.”
Moravia, the terminal manager, pinged him: “Sorry to bother you, Agent Javier, but one of the adolescents has gone missing. He may have run back to the boat.”
“Mais non! Tell me how I can help,” he said.
Kids did this: ran from the cameras during storms, fleeing the omnipresent surveillance when comms were down. A surprising number of these lemmings vanished, never to be seen again. It had been a full-blown crisis during the Clawback. Lemmings were why Global Oversight had given the Department of Preadolescent Affairs so much power. The move had slowed the trend, though not eliminated it.
The lemming phenom was an endless fount of @hoaxer speculation. Every time someone lost a child, after all, someone else got an opp to have one. Could rogue @Freebreeders be pushing the queue by enabling disappearances? Then again, there was also an #urbanmyth, among kids, that told of a surveillance-free paradise. Some of the children they’d recovered had claimed to be seeking this Neverland.
Anselmo followed Moravia to a staff exit, where extra packs of primer nanos—extra mass for manifesting rain gear and nanoboots—awaited.
He wasn’t alone.
A tough-looking woman, middle-aged and with a scar running diagonally across her cheek, was also gearing up.
Whooz data: Misfortune Wilson, she/her/hers, midlevel gigger for Scotland Yard, Cloudsight rating 59%.
“Bonjour,” Anselmo said. “I’m here to search for the boy.”
“Hardly a job for two.” Misfortune adjusted unseen lumps—equipment, or her worldlies?—within her rain gear. She had a loop of black yarn strung from the sleeve, wound into her fingers.
From her glower, Anselmo pegged her as one of those Clawback generation #survivors, the type who prided themselves on being world-weary and cynical.
“It’s a big terminal,” he said, absorbing two packs into his own primer, growing long sleeves, fingerless gloves, and a hood. “I’m sure he’s very frightened.”
“Idiot children. Flinging themselves into the sea whenever it rains. If they remembered what it was like during the plagues—”
Ignoring her complaints, Anselmo booted up nanocleats before forcing the heavy storm door.
Wind punched him like a cold fist. Icy rain washed his exposed fingers. He fumbled to pinch his primer entirely over his face.
“Coming?” he asked. His implants pulled up streaming views of the route back to the dock.
Misfortune stomped out. “One nutter in every pack!”
Many would give her a strike for using a phrase like nutter in reference to anyone, let alone a kid in danger.
Anselmo queried her public résumé. She’d been surprisingly peripatetic. Lots of gigs, worldwide, despite her obvious attitude problem.
No promotions, though. Plays badly with others, then.
“Are you outside?” Rubi’s voice, in his ear, was accompanied by a blue neon up-arrow, indicating remote presence above them. “I’m storm-riding.”
“There’s a young boy loose in the terminal,” he said. Aloud, the better to project compassion.
“Lemming?” Her voice mixed horror and awe.
Misfortune turned, hand-signing a question. Anselmo spliced the three of them into one channel and cross-tagged their identities—the modern method of making introductions. “Word has it the boy is headed for the ferry.”
“But,” Rubi said, “ferry’s pushing off.”
Anselmo picked up the pace. Rain-lashed dock staff were indeed disconnecting the ramps.
“You’ve got a runaway boy aboard, n’est-ce pas?”
“Turned him away!” the purser shouted over the howling wind. “Terminal’s locking down.”
“You’ve got two more ships out there!”
“More dangerous to dock than to ride it out. Lightning incoming. Everyone’s ordered off the tarmac.”
Anselmo gave the crew a strike.
“Oi!”
“Someone should have escorted that child back.”
Misfortune’s shoulders lifted, as if a load had come off. “He’s gone, then. Nothing more we can do.”
She sent Anselmo a stroke, tagged Going the extra mile. Then she pivoted, chugging athletically back to the terminal.
Anselmo backed against a wall, considering. The stroke was a bit of nicely judged social blackmail. As far as Misfortune was concerned, the two of them had done their duty merely by stepping out of doors.
He could strike her, but for what? Failing to go an extra extra mile when she was already off-duty and he’d just popped someone else?
“Still looking around,” Rubi said as he thought daggers at his retreating colleague. “Lots of the fixed cams are down.”
Anselmo mojied thumbs-up, checked his Sensorium connection was solid—the better to tell the gig coordinator, if he logged, whether he’d gotten fried by lightning or smashed by flying debris. He spared a sympathetic glance at two massive shadows rolling in the gray washout of the rain, ships with hundreds of passengers, heaving on the waves.
If the boy was suicidal, he would already be in the water.
Typical. Everywhere Anselmo looked, WestEuro was on its way down. He wondered where upgrades to the crumbling Port of Dover fell within Global Oversight’s upgrade queue. Calais was new only because France had crowdsourced the renovation, scrimping carbon credits and recycled materials from local citizens.
Rubi’s voice broke in: “Found a door flapping on what looks like a field hospital.”
Field hospital. You and your war sims. He pushed off from the steel wall, following neon breadcrumbs.
“Watch out. I just saw lightning hit the east dock.”
Look heroic. You’re selflessly risking yourself to save a youngster. Anselmo found the wildly flapping door and the tangle of fencing that had jammed it.
Save the day. Get promoted. One way or another, level up and move to Beijing. He wrestled the debris, shoved himself inside, and tried hanging on to the door. Suctioned by wind, it pulled itself free of his numbed fingers, slamming definitively.
Panting, Anselmo loaded the building layout. There were two floors, reinforced for storms, tasked to infirmary space, contraband lockup, and veterinary clinic. During the Setback, this building would have been for interrogating—terrorizing, really—travelers whose skin color or religious faith was currently in disfavor. During Misfortune’s plague-besieged youth, it might have been repurposed for medical quarantine.
Anselmo started a search.
Rubi pinged him: “I found a couple possible hiding places on the lot. I sent them to your partner but hit a comms block.”
“Misfortune’s not a partner. More of a professional…” What had they called it, back in the day? “… blind date.”
“Bit of a #crashburn.”
“Not everyone I meet on the job can be as delightful as yourself.”
“Charmer.”
This first room was a blood lab. Black counters, long since emptied of sinks and syringes, exuded a whiff of damp dust. Crates of printer supplies were piled in its corners.
He searched, closed up, waited to hear the door lock, and crossed the hall.
Here: spray of blood, on the floor, crimson drops bright under the lights.
“Allo?” This room held emergency supplies: bulky pharmaprinter dominating one wall, collapsible treatment tables, nanosilk packs, bottled water, a defibrillator. Hooks and curtains, built into the ceiling, allowed the division of the space into individual patient pop-ins.
Anselmo drew back a curtain with a screeching rattle, revealing a blood-smeared medical kit.
Crouching, he peered under the next curtain, scanning the floor. No feet, no movement.
“Where are you?”
Rubi, rather than the missing kid, was the one who answered. “Trying to get that Scotland Yard woman to come back. This has the makings of a perfect ambush.”
“He’s a child, not some sim antagonist,” Anselmo said. “You know how many kids go missing in superstorms?”
A pause. “I didn’t mean to be insensitive.”
He sent a burst of moji balloons, meaning No hard feelings. “You have cameras beyond these curtains?”
“They were off, but…” Her toon flew ahead, passing through the barriers. “Back corner, on a bed. His head’s bleeding.”
“I’ll take it from here,” Anselmo said. “Go back to your flyover.”
“I can talk to him,” she said. “Since that bobby ditched you.”
If she came along, any strokes for the rescue would get sucked into the vortex of her fame. “I appreciate the assist, but—”
“I’m good with difficult people.”
“Rubi, I have to go.” He stepped past the first curtain, skirting the treatment bed.
“But—”
He kept his tone friendly. “It’s police business now.” Without waiting for another But! he muted her, then raised his voice. “Hello? I’m here to help.”
A rustle. He edged closer, then pulled the curtain.
The teenaged boy was stocky, with big hands and a bloodied face. He held a scalpel in one hand, startling when Anselmo pulled the curtain.
In his surprise, he threw something—a medi-stapler?—at Anselmo, bouncing it off his chest. Instinctive impulse, response to an unexpected threat.
The boy had been cutting his hair. Blood-soaked plaits littered the floor.
“Hey, hey,” Anselmo said. “English, yes? Yes? Everything’s okay.”
The boy moaned.
“I’m police,” Anselmo said, showing his vintage badge.
Quick interplay of emotions over the kid’s face. Then he sagged, defeated, and dropped the scalpel. “My hand slipped.” He showed a bloody flap of scalp, hanging. A second wound—circular gouge, in his upper arm—dripped steadily.
Anselmo checked the port manager, gesturing for the boy to settle on a treatment bed. “I’ll get a paramedic on the line.”
Dover greenlighted additional resources. The infirmary heat kicked in and the pharmaceutical printer hummed to life. An antique camera winged over the curtain, rotors trailing cobwebs.
A paramedic joined the channel, walking Anselmo through the process of finding a proper set of tweezers and sterile gloves within the infirmary stores. Meanwhile, the printer ran contact anesthetics to numb the boy’s injuries.
“Everything’s okay,” Anselmo said, dabbing anesthetic on the boy’s arm wound and gashed scalp. “What’s your name?”
“Paul.”
Suddenly, the boy’s thumb beat out a rhythm against Anselmo’s hip, body-texting. U from #Neverland?
Anselmo’s face must have shown confusion.
Can’t you let me go?
“Bonjour, Paul,” he said aloud. “How’s that arm?”
“Still sore.” His eyes were big, pleading.
The paramedic subbed, “Give the anesthetic another sixty.”
Neverland. Paul was one of those kids who’d bought in to the #urbanmyth of a children’s paradise, somewhere without adults or cameras.
Anselmo laid a finger on the boy’s back, morsing in reply. Did someone suggest you should go outside?
Paul sniffled and shook his head.
Pre-implanted kids cracked, sometimes, under the strain of constant surveillance. It explained his arm. He’d dug out his locator and ditched his helmet and speakers.
Anselmo scanned the room, saw the RFID, still bloodied, sitting in a padded capsule as if awaiting shipment to some other location. He flagged the incident, recommending a psychosocial audit of the boy’s pack and peer group.
At the same time and under the paramedic’s supervision, he snipped one last dangling plait of hair, pressed the flap of skin back into place on the boy’s half-denuded scalp, and used sterile adhesive to tack the skin together.
“He broke off a scalpel point in his arm,” said the paramedic, “when he pulled his chip. Use the tweezers and reassure him.”
Anselmo made a patter of it: “Paul, this isn’t going to feel great but it’ll be over soon, you’re doing great, I just need to get a grip … good!”
The kid tried to yank away as he made the attempt. Blood sprayed. Awkwardly, Anselmo clapped an absorbent smartwipe over the wound, applying pressure until the wipe indicated the flow of blood had stopped. It had cobwebbed the gash in coagulant-laced threads.
He got a cluster of strokes: from the paramedic, the ferry manager, the volunteer coordinator, Rubi Whiting, and the kid’s panicking parents.
“He’ll be fine now, until you get him back to the terminal,” said the paramedic. “Your contaminated primer nanos will slough off into medical waste. Just wash up.”
Anselmo went to the printer to comply, mind churning on ways to charmingly entertain the introverted teen, to seem fatherly, while they waited out the wind.