THE SURFACE—WESTEURO
LONDON, PICCADILLY
The multiheaded storm lashed the Atlantic shores, throwing itself against greenwalls and fortified dikes in coastal megacities from London to Lisbon, San Juan to Tampico. It dumped water on the ruins of Philadelphia, straining to reach as far inland as the Toronto-Detroit axis of the Great Lakes Reclamation region. Cisterns overflowed and rain gushed though the streets. Trees smashed power panels and kiosks. Playspaces under buildings filled with stormwater and drained out, slowly, through industrial-grade oxygenators.
Millions followed Cherub Whiting’s example: burrowing in, hunkering down. Families merged on their shared e-states. They worked, studied, and queued for high-traffic entertainment sims like Drow’s party. Bounceback-era storms always had a festival atmosphere. People gathered online in ever-bigger numbers, traveling a circuit of impromptu parties.
Meanwhile, preadolescents fled home by the dozens.
Some lemmings were captured by drones or police. Others turned up dead, logged as accident victims or slain by their own hand. A few vanished entirely.
When the all-clear came from the weather office, the Bounceback generation charged into realworld cleanup. Drone pilots flew infrastructure damage assessments. Others gigged on volunteer crews, pulling together to sweep glass and chip deadfalls. Strangers bonded over shared hardship and broken flood berms.
Tampico, typically, was hardest hit, with a five-figure death toll and an aftershock of drug-resistant cholera. Five hundred shrink-wrapped houses within its quarantined suburbs were washed away by storm surges, leaving beaches littered with drywall and unidentified chem and biohazards.
The usual conversation foamed across Sensorium. Was it time to consolidate the Southeast, forcing the Florida population inland? Was it worthwhile to maintain the infrastructure for growing luxury commodities—fresh fruit, coconuts, beans, and peanuts?
By way of surly reply, Tampico City Hall posted the roster of their dead and kept farming.
The storm kept Anselmo Javier tied down until it was time to beard Luciano Pox at the theater.
He’d spent the enforced downtime auditing Cherub Whiting’s transcripts, analyzing interactions with her private sidekick. There was nothing to flag. Plenty of unicorn hunters had taken a run at the Crane app, looking for signs of true self-awareness.
Good, he thought. Any hope of kindling romance with Rubi would implode if she was harboring an emergent.
Did he hope? Could she be swayed?
Uncertain and unknown.
Meanwhile, WestEuro Eldercare, the facility where Pox allegedly resided, had confirmed the field trip to Piccadilly to see Macbeth.
There’d have been no deep diving for the Eldercare attendants, permajobbers with fragile elders to attend. They would have been monitoring life signs in medical support pods, prepping backup meds, all to the howl of thunder and wind. The staff would be itching for an outing. Nothing short of a wildfire would cancel them now.
Anselmo beat Pox’s bus to the West End, barely, and was surprised to find Macbeth had sold out. When confronted with his @Interpol credentials, the box office grudgingly gave him permission to observe the show from a crew balcony.
The Piccadilly was crawling with preadolescent Londoners. One school, fifty strong, had been seated below the balcony. Young adults, behind them, lounged and struck poses. Anselmo checked their tags, finding #student #actor #Bardfan #musicfan. A pop-up cadre of glass-sweepers, volunteers who’d been cleaning debris from the West End streets—had been comped tickets as a thank-you.
Poetry and regicide as reward for unpaid manual labor. Anselmso gave the theater a stroke for supporting a Bounceback core principle: work could be unpaid but never unappreciated.
The best seats had been converted to a raked parking lot for wheeled smartchairs, and elders were already driving in. Support staff directed traffic, supervising as the chairs formed rows, lining up their cargo of life-extended grayhairs. Some were lively and animated. Others were almost @jarheads, sunk into full-time Sensorium engagement.
A glint of gold, house right, caught Anselmo’s eye.
Rubi Whiting?
Switching his view to a ceiling cam, he zoomed in on the street-sweepers, hoping to find a cosplayer. Since the @Freebreed attack, people had been printing the hammer-and-tongs fabric from Rubi’s Paris dress: he’d seen the pattern on trousers, headscarves, and satchels. Adopting Rubi’s fingerling dreads—or attempting to knock off her trademark head beads—would be a logical spin on the fad.
But no. 20X magnification revealed Rubi herself, aglow and smug, wearing an orange dustscreen over her primer and even now tucking the beads under a matching headscarf.
Of course she’d taken a cleanup shift: she was the Bounceback poster child, after all. Why not sweep rubble in London, all while creating an opp to latch on to Luce before their agreed-upon meet?
She popped upright in her seat, straining to see the entrance.
Luciano Pox wheeled into the theater. He matched his Sensorium toon: pale pink skin, that look of permanent sunburn. Impossible to tell if his eyes were still a vivid blue: old-school goggles cupped his sockets. A food mister was clamped into his cheek, a respirator suctioned over that. Cocooned in a smartfoam chair, he gave no outward sign of being aware of his surroundings as an Eldercare worker locked him in place.
Anselmo fired off a warrant request to audit Pox’s smartchair. Dispatch ran it through a precedents app, then flagged it up to a judge.
“We are requesting backup for you,” said the @Interpol Desk Sergeant app. “A qualified forensic tech.”
Anselmo felt a pulse of excitement. Additional resources—live staff! They thought he had a case?
“Gig accepted.”
The tech—Malika Amiree—tooned in. She was a tall woman, half his age and already an agent. Some kind of by-the-book brownnoser, probably.
Clad in a niqab, Malika’s toon wore complex henna animations on her hands. Her substantial-looking résumé unfurled in his peripheral, overlaying his view of Rubi.
“Thanks for coming,” Anselmo said.
She bowed slightly, taking in his #serpico look and combat vest without comment. “What’s the gig?”
Anselmo whiteboarded the specs, watching her face as she scanned his notes. People tended to see unicorn hunts as no-hopers, sand traps in the quest to level their career. She took in the Greenwich data, the satellite transmission stats, without so much as a raised eyebrow. Missing, he hoped, the significance of his outlier suspicion about Luce.
Malika said, “I see the target’s lawyer is in play?”
“Here in the flesh, yes.” He pointed.
“Will she block us?”
“Her contract specifies she has to help him.”
“Only if Pox is meat, right?” Malika zoomed in on the goggled, unmoving form of Pox. “If this is identity theft, all bets are off.”
“If Pox had been in that chair since Abruzzo, we’d have traced him to that facility’s Sensorium helix.”
“Checking.” Malika was half-glazed, deep in the local systems. “Was your Pox a coder?”
“Winemaker,” he said. “Housed in Italy but recently demoted to a lower subscription level.”
“Hardly seems like they’d recoup the carbon cost of moving him to London.”
“Matter of principle. #Triage for troublemakers.”
She snapped her focus back to him. “Still. Your theory about what’s in there—”
“The man in that chair is an inert crepit,” Anselmo said. “Pox didn’t wake up six months ago feeling nostalgic for martial law.”
“The lawyer know you think he’s the Singularity?”
“She guessed. Why?”
She swept her hands out, like an orchestra conductor. Toons filled the theater, ghosts presenting in virtual rows between the real seats. Most were family members of the kids and senior citizens, riding along to take in the show remotely. But Malika lampshaded a white-suited toon with a cane, standing beside Pox’s chair.
“Woodrow Whiting,” Malika said. “The MadMaestro himself. Apparently, he rescored the Macbeth soundtrack. Since his career mash-up includes counseling, I’m thinking Cherub hooked them up.”
Another celebrity interloper? As Anselmo digested this unwelcome wrinkle, the lights went down. Flash pot blasts preceded the appearance of three figures onstage.
The witches.
“When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?” Old words echoed off ancient rafters.
Anselmo’s warrant pinged through.
“Showtime,” he said. “Access Pox’s smartchair.”
“With his lawyer and peer counselor present?”
“You said it yourself, Agent Amiree. We prove Pox isn’t meat, he has no rights.”
A pause. Then: “D’accord. Serve the nurse.”
Anselmo dove, manifesting in the Eldercare supervisor’s virtual display. She was near the phalanx of chairs, monitoring a virtual bank of health crawls. Data spun before her: Macbeth’s witches were barely visible through sixty nested infographs showing heart rates, blood pressure, and meds.
“Good afternoon,” Anselmo said, transmitting his badge and warrant. “Your name is Greca Meera? @Interpol Special Ops has permission to run diagnostics on your control panel.”
Greca frowned. “This is medical software.”
Anselmo shared documentation. “Our warrant verifies Agent Amiree’s qualifications.”
“I’ll ping Eldercare Legal.”
“Is she stalling?” Malika subbed. The henna toons on her hands changed to moji, tiny self-portraits showing wide-mouthed excitement.
“My supervisors have to sign off,” Greca added.
Definitely stalling. “This warrant offers a tutorial module which explains the legal verification process.”
“But—”
“Now, Mer Meera.”
Malika handshook the life-signs monitor. The software, at least, respected the law. It unlocked.
“I’m in.”
“Check Pox and—”
“#Malware detected,” she interrupted. Fifty-three sets of diagnostics dropped out of sight, graylisted. Another half dozen …
“What’s happening?” Anselmo asked.
“Seven chairs have refused my systems check.”
“Seven?”
“Seven including Pox.” Malika clapped her hands. Moji—a pack of wolves, on the hunt, burst from her fingers.
Seven possible Poxes?
“Greenlighting an on-call analyst in Berlin.” The tech pulled more resources … without so much as asking permission. Then Anselmo saw a supervision support app unlock. He was suddenly running a team of four.
No, they were running. After ten minutes on the case, Malika was somehow sharing team leadership.
“Drilling into connected devices monitoring health metrics … Pay dirt!” Malika said. “Illegal firewall!”
Anselmo wished now that he’d gone down to confront Greca in person. Instead, he demanded, via his toon, “Why have these pods locked us out?”
“Locked? I don’t know. I—”
“Can you lower the secondary firewall? Oui or non?”
“What firewall?” She flapped unconvincingly.
“Flag these patients’ chairs. Who are they?”
He had tuned out Macbeth so entirely that when the shriek began, it didn’t register.
A rusty howl became words: “Behold, I am the Angel of Death!”
The audience reacted with nervous laughter.
Anselmo paused all remote conversations, returning focus to his in-the-flesh vantage point above the audience. The few glass-sweepers watching the play—most were prologuing casual sex opps—seemed to think this was part of the show. The schoolchildren moved restlessly, clearly surprised by this turn—
Rubi was out of her seat, a cat about to spring.
Boom! Special effects fired: whump of fog from the witches’ cauldron, a murderously bright round of false lightning flashes, the sound of clanging swords. A drizzle of crimson fluid, from above, caught Witch One on the forehead. She looked up, mouth hanging, getting drenched as spurts of red gore burst from a pipe. Flashing lights illuminated her face, crimson-wet and disembodied by the fog.
The kids began to shriek.
“Shouldn’t you deal with that?” asked the Eldercare attendant. Anything to get Anselmo off the scent of her seven compromised zombies.
“Lower those firewalls now. That’s an order.”
“Obey, forsooth!” the Angel of Death voice boomed. “Or shall I tumble them in righteous fury!”
The curtain lowered, froze, rose again, and then ratcheted down, sending actors scattering.
“Is’t thee?”
One of the smartchairs lurched, bursting into motion and ramming the old lady seated nearest. The operator, an elder of indeterminate gender, grabbed the manual brake with shaky hands, forcing the chair into a spin.
The runaway chair reversed, nearly toppling as it hit a ridge in the concrete ramp. It accelerated, forward again, ramming two more chairs.
Was this Pox?
No. Pox’s chair remained braked and locked, with Drow Whiting beside it.
A few of the front-row elders began fleeing toward the exit, rolling away from the melee.
“Deactivating security on the seven firewalled pods,” Malika reported.
“There shall be no escape!” The volume on the speaker was cranked; false thunder battered Anselmo’s ears.
The teachers seated near the back decided enough was enough. They got the schoolchildren moving, urging them up the aisle toward the lobby door. Rubi Whiting and two of her fellow volunteers, meanwhile, scrambled over seats to wrestle the rogue smartchair.
As they subdued it, another chair vroomed to life.
“Growth! Tumor! Peekaboo, I see you!”
“Requesting crowd control from London City Police,” Malika said.
Anselmo should have done that already. “Request ambulances while you’re at it.”
Her henna toons mojied, already done.
A runaway smartchair slammed its peers. Its owner jerked, tilting forward. She raised its wheels off the ground and balanced on old ankles, shakily using remnant muscle strength to render the chair helpless.
“Knock knock, who’s there?” Another chair lunged at the delicately balanced senior, tumbling her to the concrete. Anselmo heard—or imagined—the sound of old bones snapping. “Ready or not, here I come!”
Screams rose above the sound effects.
“Receiving diagnostics from the seven locked pods,” Malika said. “Patient metrics have them on life support.”
Medical-priority beeps pierced the cacophony.
Heart monitors: the sound of people coding.
Meanwhile, runaway smartchairs kept ramming people.
What to do?
Think, think …
The schoolkids had reached the theater door. The teacher pulled … and nothing happened. “We’re locked in!”
Anselmo changed gears. Rescuing the runaway boy in Dover had got him a start on a #hero brand, even if Rubi’s presence had diffused the strokes he might otherwise have garnered. Now he sprinted to the edge of the crew balcony, accessing the backstage staircase.
“Building specs,” he ordered Desk Sergeant. “Find me a fire ax and a route to the lobby.”
Directional arrows bloomed on the wall.
“Seven firewalled chairs are legit coding,” Malika reported. “Their respirators downcycled and they’ve activated warming blankets.”
“Warming blankets?”
“Raising patient body temps. You aren’t dead until you’re warm and dead.”
Seven elders being murdered. Trapped children pounding on the lobby door. All uploading live.
Get this right, get it right …
“Where’s your body, Anselmo?”
Instead of answering, he said, “What about the runaway chairs?”
“The volunteer cadre is neutralizing them,” Malika reported.
More likes for Rubi, then.
“Some little kids ran down to the pit floor. One’s been hit. The rest are trying to exit.”
“I’m on my way. Status of Pox?”
“Flatline. No pulse, no brainwaves.”
Anselmo found the old firebox and grabbed the ax. “Pox is dying?”
“Dead. All seven elders in all seven firewalled pods.”
What in hell was going on? Anselmo reached the theater door. Beyond it, screams were building. He spared a second to make sure the door was, in fact, still locked from his side. No point in chopping into the wall for no reason. But the latch was resolute.
“@PicadillyGuests: Clear the door!” he bellowed.
Malika highlighted the doorframe, showing where the lock’s brains would be. One. Two. Three. Anselmo hit it—clumsily, the first time—then with more force. Black plaster flew. Lock software released on the fourth stroke; the bolt shattered, amid a shower of sparks, on the fifth.
Fire alarms triggered and water rained down.
Anselmo had enough time to get out of the way before an adult on the other side kicked the door, hard enough to burst the now-compromised latch.
“Children! Here! No pushing.”
Two by two, they evacuated. The grown-up gave Anselmo two strokes, directing the children aside with a pale hand while letting Anselmo slip inside. Admirable multitasking. He stroked back as he pushed past, against the flow of the evac, into chaos.
The theater instruments were getting a workout. Bagpipe electronica—Drow Whiting’s new piece, presumably—wailed from the speakers. Flash pots blasted as the curtain rose and fell. Strobes hashed Anselmo’s visual field. An air horn wailed and icy graywater poured from the sprinklers. The cauldron rose and fell on its trapdoor, and the bloody-faced actress was fighting with the nearest fire exit, wedging a sword into the plate in an attempt to force the lock.
Rubi and her volunteer pack were still restraining runaway wheelchairs full of crepits. Amid the jostle, the seven dead chairs were still as monuments.
“I have two anomalous apps in the fire system,” said Malika. “They’re jumping in and out of the safety hardware protocols. One is giving pingbacks for a #triage consultant.”
“Angel of Death,” Anselmo muttered. “And the other?”
“Glitchy, hard to analyze. It’s the one locking all the doors. I’m offering it a nice safe harbor in the building HVAC system.”
Locked doors. Locked epi pens. Pox?
“Let me know when you catch it.” Anselmo elbowed his way down to the pit. One smartchair lunged as he passed, its elderly operator waving apologetically as she gripped its brakes with veiny hands. She managed to steer into an old man and the two of them grabbed each other’s armrests, locking the chairs together so they couldn’t maneuver.
The injured student was with a teacher. The bloody-faced witch placed herself between Anselmo and the child, sword raised.
“Police!” Anselmo shouted, transmitting his badge far and wide. The strobe made a jump-cut of her as she lowered the sword. Pushing past her, he hacked the back exit open with the ax.
Suddenly, the house lights came on, full and bright. The sprinklers coughed, sputtered, and stopped spraying. The rogue chairs powered down and the music faded out.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.
“You catch them?” Anselmo asked Malika.
Long pause. “Our mystery code ignored the HVAC, remote-accessed an ambulance, and locked its doors for no good reason. Then it shot out through an antique WiFi router in the car’s defrosting monitor.”
Junk tech. Typical WestEuro.
A meter away, Rubi released the smartchair she’d been fighting and clambered to the bald, cocooned form of Luciano Pox.
“Luce?” She laid a hand on his head, then dug out a breathing bag and swapped it for Pox’s respirator mask.
Pumping Pox’s dead lungs would tie her up for a minute. Anselmo turned to Greca Meera, flooding her uplink with interdiction protocols, putting her on total Sensorium lockdown and summoning a custody drone. “You are under arrest. Take a seat and wait for instructions.”
Stepping past her, he went to see if he could do something conspicuously caring for any of the injured elders.