THE SURFACE—WESTEURO
LONDON, PICCADILLY THEATRE
There was nothing action-hero sexy about wrestling powered wheelchairs. It was clumsy work, requiring brute strength and cooperation.
Some chairs had rear-wheel drive only. Those were a two-person job—any two volunteers could raise the back wheels off the ground. The first chair Rubi and the others had tackled in this way vroomed, in a mechanical simulation of frustration, before going dead. Then a different chair, an all-wheel job, had turned battering ram, attacking the row in front of it.
All-wheels were stronger and heavier, forcing four people to grab and lift them.
The pop-up pack of glass-sweepers didn’t outnumber the elders four to one. Each time Rubi and the others subdued one chair, two more would roar to life.
“Wasn’t musical chairs a thing once?” she muttered.
“Just be careful, Miss Cherub,” Crane had replied.
The chairs’ elderly passengers were helpful, hysterical, and in one case overcome by hilarity. Rubi had felt the shocks of that old lady’s laughter in her back muscles as she’d strained to keep two hundred pounds of semi-intelligent life support off the ground.
“Can’t we power them down?” one of the others asked.
“Not without shutting off air and dialysis and meds,” came the response.
“Dial up our Superhoomin, love,” cackled the woman who’d been laughing. “Let us handle it!”
The chair holding Luce’s pale, cocooned form never even twitched. It stayed in park, wailing its one-note electronic alarm. Drow’s toon loomed above it, looking wide-eyed and peaky, almost frantic.
“Get over here, kid!”
“What’s that noise?”
“It’s his heart monitor,” Drow said.
The old man’s head was cool, clammy. Rubi ripped open a zip bag labeled EMERGENCY, found a mask and breathing bag inside, and tore them out of their steriwrap.
“Oh, God. Crane, find a tutorial for this.”
The sidekick filled her vision with easy-follow graphics, outlining the spots on Luce’s nose and mouth where the mask needed to align, simultaneously labeling the mask’s bottom and top.
She pressed it against limp skin.
Squeeze! Red text marqueed across her augmented view of the theater.
Rubi squeezed.
“Release. Count, two, three, four. Squeeze.”
“Keep it going,” Drow said.
She bit back a caustic response. “Either of you know what’s going on?”
“Someone sabotaged the theater effects board,” Crane said. “And the Eldercare medical controls.”
Squeeze. Release. Count, two, three, four. “Who?”
“Normally, I’d say they’d fit up Luce for it,” Drow said. “But—”
“No. They’ll see—he’s … The police don’t—”
“No? Check out that #cowboycop over in the corner.”
Damn.
There was Anselmo, in the flesh. He was wearing the ridiculous bulletproof vest again and holding an ax, of all things, as he lectured a middle-aged woman tagged #offline #inpolicecustody. Beside him was a police toon, a Muslim woman covered in henna moji.
Her father ran a hand through the white bristles of his hair, trigging a shower of virtual sparks. “You were going to say something about me being paranoid about police?”
What could she say? Not that she’d agreed Anselmo could meet with Luce, during their face-to-face.
“Four, Miss Cherub,” Crane said loudly.
She squeezed the bag. Released.
The countdown vanished from her monitor. The chair rebooted. Lights and monitors began flashing.
“Count, two, three, four,” Rubi said aloud. “Squeeze.”
“Honey,” Drow said, voice gentle. “He’s gone.”
She straightened. Her lips felt chapped. Her hand cramped, seeming to resist as she pulled the bag away. She chewed air for a second, trying to form words.
Augments tagged Luce’s body. “Terminal patient. Potential biohazard. Await appropriate personnel.”
“Ads, ads, ads,” she murmured.
“Are you all right, Miss Cherub?”
“Stupid.” Blinking hard, she saw other chairs also flashing red. “How did … this?”
“@Interpol tech support is actively auditing all systems tied to the incident,” Crane said.
“Was it @Freebreeders again?” she said. “Grab the young, euthanize the old. Seven dead elders means three more baby licenses, right?”
“Corpse copse, corpse copse,” Drow muttered.
Uh-oh. “Dad? Are you okay?”
He raised his brows. “We should talk.”
“Did Luce say anything, before—”
“Game room,” he insisted, snapping out.
Was it just a trick of the mind, or were Luce’s features already more sunken? She braked the chair, tucked him in. Swimming tears blurred him as she pulled a blanket over his face. “Sorry,” she whispered.
Then she retreated to a cushy seat in the theater’s truncated front row.
Simulation bloomed as she settled her flesh, simultaneously porting her consciousness to their family sharespace, a series of caves, designed by her dead grandfathers as part of Drow’s Whine Manor. This particular stone chamber was filled with games, puzzles, and logic tutorials: chessboards, wall-sized Sudoku, dice with letters on them instead of numbers, and jigsaw puzzles.
Rubi’s toon adjusted to match the gothic decor: wine-colored Victorian dress, full-length, with a hexagonal gold cameo at the throat to match her brand.
Drow, resplendent in full Lord Byron gear, was circling the room.
“What the hell?” she demanded. “Was it @Freebreeders?”
“Makes a good story, doesn’t it? They’re here, they’re there, they’re everywhere!”
“Focus up, Drow! Our client died.” Bile burned at the back of her throat.
“Died. Mmm.” Drow frowned at a jigsaw puzzle, image of a scarab beetle rolling a ball of dung. He started putting it together, moving fast.
Too fast.
Fury boiled through her. Had he simply chosen now, of all times, to give her an FYI that he’d got himself some Leonardo?
He froze. Shot her a guilty look.
Rubi flicked his forehead with a fingernail to show, without saying, that yes, he was busted and yes, she was pissed.
Never admit anything out loud. Especially with @Interpol crunching your transcripts in realtime.
“Forget about @Freebreeders getting credit, Rubi. They can have it—who the fuck cares?”
“If terrorists murdered my—”
“Nuh nuh nuh shhh! Remember Luce’s claims? An attacker?”
If Dad was amped, he might as well amp for her. “So?”
“What just happened was pretty attacky. You have to admit.”
Crunch of smartchairs striking flesh. She winced.
“All that was because something was after him?”
“I’ve been trying to figure out why Luce was booting up in a virtual lab after his seizures.” Drow stirred the puzzle pieces. “It’s an archived history class, used to teach Sensorium history and firewall coding. It has atypical protections against intrusion.”
The key to pussyfooting through a conversation was never saying anything specific or actionable. You had to guess what the other person was trying to tell you. If you didn’t understand, you couldn’t ask.
Usually, with Drow, it didn’t matter. Rubi could throw a blanket over their hands and text in Morse, finger to palm, off camera, off mic.
Here, with an ocean between them, they had to rely on subtext, shared experience, and mutual understanding. Sweet harmony, some called it. She picked up a random puzzle piece and tried it in a bunch of obvious wrong places.
“You must have a confidential workroom at Cloudsight for this support ticket,” Drow said.
She nodded.
“I recommend hitting the office now,” Drow said, “Check your Luce room. It’s prosocial, right? See if you’ve got anything to offer that #tequilayuen fan to help with their investigation. Into, you know. Luce’s. Death.”
Faint emphasis on the death. It was the tone of voice he’d use if he was making air quotes.
Oh.
“You think?”
“Me? I think help @Interpol. This is me, officially on the record, saying to cooperate with…” His finger fell onto the scarab’s ball of dung. “With that ambitious and upstanding policeman.”
Very prosocial. Rubi quashed a sigh.
Luce booted in secure environments. She’d theorized that he had stolen the old man’s ID. If his flesh had died but his consciousness lay elsewhere …
That’s supposed to be impossible.
Unless he truly is a sapient program.
“Also, Crane: Rubi needs to ice that arm.”
“Miss Cherub?”
“He’s right. Of course.” Her shoulder was throbbing. She flicked Drow again.
He looked unrepentant … even pleased with himself.
Of course he was pleased. He was composing bagpipe noise and writing symphonies and working on her case and playing concerts and blasting his way through therapy modules, building up his conspiracy theories and God knew what else.
At least she wouldn’t have to tell him she had been cooperating with Anselmo—by tomorrow, he’d have worked that out for himself.
And when being amped spiraled into anxiety attacks and paranoid fantasies, into eating disorders and hunts for mass graves and demands that she come home and cutting and nightmares, who would reel in his string? “Are you still touring?”
“Working south, slow but sure. Robin and Whiskey Sour are close at hand. Everything’s okay. I’m okay.”
“We’ll finish this later,” she warned him, setting the last piece into the puzzle.
“Yeah. Love you, too.”
With that, she pulled out her office keys and headed for Cloudsight.