THE SURFACE—WESTEURO
LONDON, TRAFALGAR SQUARE
She’s going to think we’re stalking her, Gimlet Barnes thought. Then wondered, a second later, Are we?
Frankie had insisted on joining the theater school expedition to Macbeth on the strength of her (misguided, to Gimlet’s mind) fannish passion for Rubi’s dad, the dissolute MadMaestro, who had refurbished the Piccadilly show’s overture and soundtrack. Babygirl trotted out an alert about the show just as Gimlet was trying to tempt her out to experience a London museum in the flesh. They could hardly refuse her a live theater experience.
From the state of her hanging jaw, Frankie’d had no idea that Rubi was also in the mix.
She pulled herself together, sticking out her hand and sending their Department credentials. “Huh … hello! This is beyond … ah, I’m Frankie Barnes. I know you know Gimlet. We were at the play, so I’ve picked up advocacy duties for—” She ran dry, gesturing at her gathered age peers.
“It is beyond,” Rubi agreed, and her delight seemed genuine. She had her father’s abundant charisma, without the suicidal edges. “I didn’t know you guys were DPA. That’s surprisingly John Law of you, Gimlet.”
“It’s Frankie’s badge,” Gimlet said. “I’m merely support.”
They ran dry again. Luckily, perhaps, Agent Javier pounced on the pause. “We’d like to finish with your peers as quickly as possible, Mer Barnes. Get them cleared, out of the spotlight.”
“I’ll start interviewing them,” Franks said.
“Live?”
“Sometimes, they’ll tell another kid things they won’t say to witness apps.”
“D’accord. This way.”
The two of them headed over to the school, who had been gathered by their teachers around Nelson’s column.
“I had no idea you were here,” Gimlet subbed to Rubi.
She nodded, momentarily elsewhere. Then her brows came together in a familiar expression: decision reached. Gimlet’s inner gamer braced for physical assault.
She replied, also subvocally, “Be interesting to play the same team. Assuming it pans out that way.” No flirtatious vibe. She was all business.
“You think it won’t?”
“@Interpol’s trying to broom me.” She gave the barest of shrugs. Asking Gimlet to guess her thoughts, so she wouldn’t have to commit them to transcript.
Trouble was, Gimlet had zero context for sweet harmony with Rubi Whiting.
Rubi was usually cast, in the sims, as a virtuous ragamuffin, scrappy leader of anarchic mobs. In the flesh, she looked the part, with her scraped elbows and torn laborer’s coverall. She had a sunscarf draped over her dreadlocks, obscuring her trademark hexagon of gold beads.
She was scrutinizing Gimlet with a small smile.
A tilt of head, challenging her to share.
Rubi threw her shoulders back, standing ramrod straight: “In all your entrances…”
“Too right.” Marching into scene was, undoubtedly, their SOP. “As for you…”
They dropped into an alley-cat crouch.
Rubi burst into astonished laughter.
It felt amazing to share a laugh with someone, anyone, after the past two weeks. “Are we on at last? Bastille?”
“Still negotiating. You really wanted me in.” Gravity, in her tone, hinted that she meant more than Bastille.
Did she think Javier would be auditing this?
“I want you in, present tense,” Gimlet said. “I’ll fight for it.”
Relief, in her eyes, a nod of thanks.
“If nothing else, my daughter’s keen to friend you.”
She absolutely beamed. “I’d have tried out for DPA myself, as a kid.”
“But?”
“My single parent wasn’t up for supporting.”
“Ah.”
“And you say you saw what happened in the theater?”
“We were trapped with the rest,” Gimlet said. “I got Franks and cohort out as soon as that @Interpol fellow broke the lock on the exit.”
Agent Javier was waiting as Frankie worked. He was trying to poker-face, hiding an air of irritation. That wasn’t uncommon with Department interventions. In theory, voters horrified by the lemming phenomenon had enshrined the practice of giving the upcoming generation a say in decisions that affected their future. But when it came to including—or, God forbid, deferring to—pint-sized stakeholders, adults naturally balked.
Then again, maybe the answer was a little more primal.
“Headmistress,” Gimlet asked the family sidekick, subvocally. “This chap Javier. Is he interested in Mer Whiting?”
If there was a spark between Rubi and the @Interpol agent, it wasn’t keeping her from scrutinizing Gimlet top to toe. Comparing fleshly reality to their optimized toon, no doubt.
I probably look exhausted, Gimlet thought. Dragged under the runaway truck that is grief—
Instead of giving in to self-pity, they offered an old-style magician’s flourish: nothing up my sleeves.
An appreciative grin. “So, you escaped okay? Back at Macbeth?”
“Yes, we were fine. But some of the witnesses logged reckless-endangerment complaints. Franks and I being onsite, we were a shoo-in for the case.”
“So, for you, it’s about the kids getting stuck in the theater?”
“What else?” Gimlet reviewed the DPA shareboard. The case was so new that they were still compiling job specs. “This officer, Javier, has low user reviews. He’s been tied to incidents featuring lemmings and children at risk.”
“I’d love to fill you in. But,” she said. “Reasons.”
“You do public-defender stuff for maladjusts, don’t you?”
“My current maladjust is the one who locked the Piccadilly doors,” she said. “That’s got to be sufficient reason for keeping me in the channel.”
“Noted—”
Headmistress broke in. “Emergency, Mers Barnes. You have journalists incoming.”
Gimlet looked up. Bots with lights and lenses were choppering in from all directions, in a sky-blotting swarm that was already throwing moji and texting questions.
Rubi pulled off the veil with a sigh, rubbing up her brand as she turned to face the media onslaught.
Shoulder to shoulder: Gimlet remembered a long-ago gaming sim, back when the two of them had leveled into playing mid-level fodder. Two factions of warring humans had torn themselves to exhausted rags, only to have the leaderboard set upon by monsters from a rift beyond.
Gimlet had been surprised and pleased by the turn to alliance. Rubi was a solid fighter.
Ah, but this is the press—different beast altogether! Flying cameras clicked and whirred as they closed in. Shareboards flashed questions:
“??? Rubi: Is this the launch of Bastille?”
“??? Gimlet: Are you shagging Rubi Whiting?”
“??? Rubi: Are you afraid your father, MadMaestro-Woodrow-Bruce-Whiting-he-him-his, will attempt suicide while you are in WestEuro?”
She flinched.
Gimlet frowned, giving that bot operator a strike. It left the question hanging, unrepentant.
“??? Gimlet: What is the status of your pack dissolution?”
Rubi returned the favor, striking the pilot who’d asked that one.
“We’re divorcing?” Frankie’s voice carried across Trafalgar Square while everyone lapped up the drama.
Bloody hell. Someone must have clocked me solo-parenting in London.
Gimlet subbed, “Reporters, Franks—they ask inflammatory questions.”
“Then we’re not divorcing?”
“This is a family conversation.”
She pivoted on her heel, going back to the kids.
“Divorced?” Rubi subbed.
Gimlet used gestural moji, a mime of tearing their heart out and kicking it into the stands.
“I’m sorry.”
“Running you to ground in sim would help enormously.”
“Don’t ask for what you can’t handle, Risto scum.”
Gimlet caught a faint twitch of reaction, on Anselmo’s face.
Ah. Definitely interested, definitely jealous.
Suddenly, the flock of journo bots quieted, pulling back half a click.
Anselmo trotted up. “I’ve waved my badge, demanded a perimeter. They’re filing protests.”
“On what grounds?”
“Transparency, of course. Universal disclosure. We’ve probably got ten before they conclude a free-speech hearing.” Javier herded everyone, students and all, into the National Gallery. A guard let them into the Great Court.
“Fire from all sides,” Rubi muttered.
Gimlet put out a hand, taking care to telegraph the move before laying it on her shoulder. Under the coverall, she was strung tighter than a violin.
The memory of that in-game kiss rose, their respective Conviction doses creating an illusory memory of holding each other, moving together.
“We’re gonna give your kid ideas,” she said, nevertheless leaning into it.
“And Monsieur @Interpol?”
“No legs in it.” She shook her head. “He plays the rebel, but deep down, he’s a cold-blooded pragmatist.”
“Shudders.”
This was wrong. Sang had barely landed in Florida. Gimlet was scorching with rejection. They weren’t fit for flirtation, not with one spouse on the run and another with a #triage review scheduled for Monday.
#Triaged. Going, going, soon to be gone.
This was something else Rollsy had forbidden them telling Franks: their fifth opinion, Marie’s high-end specialist, had denied his final appeal for surgery.
Frankie gathered with the other kids near the tall black spear of a Haida totem pole. As Gimlet watched, augmented reality sketched a word cloud above them, summarizing their statements. BLOOD, FACE, CODE RED hovered near the center of the cloud, along with EXPLOSIONS.
The cloud’s perimeter was edged with references to Agent Javier’s heroism: DOOR, LOCK, AX, EXIT, SMASHING!
There was substantial gray-out within the cloud: Gimlet had Headmistress clarify the filter for a second, throwing the extra content up at the sunlit glass of the Great Court ceiling. Ah—Frankie was washing out a host of shippy queries about Rubi and Gimlet.
How had the two of them ended up here, together? It was the sort of coincidence @hoaxers thrived on.
“Headmistress?”
“Yes, Mer Barnes?”
“Copy me the alert Frankie received about the MadMaestro doing music for Macbeth. Get me numbers on its distribution.”
“Immediately, Mer Barnes. In the wake of this sudden conversation about divorce, I recommend an in-app purchase for Mer Frances, a family-conflict support app, Poppet…”
“I don’t have time to evaluate a—”
“It’s highly rated.”
“All right, accept. Ask Marie to interview it if time permits.”
Within the adolescents’ unfiltered word cloud, Gimlet now saw other tangents: the familiar complaints of the young, issues Preadolescent Affairs handled on an ongoing basis.
The point of the Department was to involve pre-implanted young people in key polls of the present day. It was they, after all, who had to live with the enduring consequences of rapid-response democracy and its lightning-fast policy-making.
Young stakeholders preferred to lobby for a lowered age for VR implantation—for independence. They wanted tweaks to leveling laws and loosening of the age restrictions on drone-piloting educational tracks. Loosening of the rationing system.
Like practically everyone, they wanted restrictions on pet-owning lifted.
Gimlet restored the filters, focusing on the Macbeth incident. Indicators of trauma were conspicuously absent from Frankie’s word cloud. Mostly, the kids hadn’t realized seven elders were dying before their eyes; events unspooled too quickly.
“I think everyone can go home,” Frankie subbed. “Javier says they’re hoping you and Rubi will put on a show.”
“Unlikely.”
“At least I got to meet her.” Franks sighed.
“What’s wrong?”
“This @Interpol guy doesn’t seem like a Bedwedder.”
“Well, he’s hiding something. Rubi’s mixed into this and he’s trying to get her out.”
“Truth?” Franks brightened.
It had been so long since she’d looked anything but depressed. Gimlet captured a pic, blinking hard.
Anselmo Javier stepped up to the curved front of the reading room, raising his voice. “The museum is surrounded by media cams and rented lookyloo drones. Our police perimeter is under transparency challenges, which we expect to lose within minutes. Any conversations not subject to confidentiality will be audited by journos. If you’ve said anything in the past thirty minutes that might be excluded from realtime public scrutiny, tag your transcript. Confidentiality experts are standing by to offer rulings.”
A virtual mailbox swirled into view beside him as he added, “Underaged civilians have been asked to clear the area.”
The kids looked disappointed; they had, as Franks said, clearly hoped Gimlet and Rubi might do something interesting. Burst into song, perhaps? Tear off each other’s primers?
Anselmo turned to Rubi. “I believe we’re done with you, Mer Whiting. I might get a car around to the artifact loading dock—”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Your ever-rising profile is interfering with this investigation.”
Ah! Gimlet thought. Rubi was drawing strokes that might otherwise go to Javier.
“I don’t know who thought it’d be cute to bring your archenemy into this”—side-glance at Gimlet, badly hidden jealousy—“but this isn’t one of your games.”
“I’m here as a lawyer.”
“Not anymore.”
“Someone tried to murder my client.”
“Which terminates your involvement, n’est-ce pas?”
Gimlet interrupted: “Clearly, the two incidents are linked.”
Frankie jumped to it. “We want Mer Whiting’s perspective.”
“She’s only here because she wanted to circumvent the travel ration,” Anselmo said. “I have seven dead, an investigation into child endangerment, and the entire Sensorium in my lap—”
He stopped suddenly. “What was that for?”
Rubi must have given him a strike.
“Failing to listen,” Rubi said. The press drones hovering above the glass roof of the museum might already be broadcasting the argument. “Interrupting. Unsubstantiated accusation of carbon frittering.”
He colored slightly.
“Disrespect for my professional expertise,” Rubi finished. “Disrespect for cooperation I’ve shown so far.”
Five strikes?
The air crackled, suddenly, with tension.
Frankie tapped the back of Gimlet’s hand, then crossed her fingers—gestural moji for a plus sign.
Was she starstruck?
She subbed, “The elders’ deaths, Mada…”
“Legit.” Gimlet added one strike, for each of them, to the pile.
Anselmo Javier’s genial facade broke. He all but vibrated with silent rage.
“Do accept my apologies.” It came out a hiss. “May I at least get the student group out of here?”
“Be my guest.”
“If you don’t have something significant to offer, Mer Whiting, I’m appealing those censures.”
“Cooperation?” A tinny voice buzzed from a nearby camera. “Rubi-she-her-advocate, did you just say fucking cooperation?”
“Is that a press bot?” Javier asked.
“I took it for museum security,” said Gimlet.
The drone hovered in their midst, rotors churning furiously.
“I’m not sure now’s the time,” Rubi told it.
“Who’s driving that thing?” Javier demanded. “Tech, I need tech—”
Gimlet made a quick hop up to a food kiosk, jigged left, and caught the cam in midair, landing lightly.
“Hey!” It vibrated in their hand. “Stop, stupid!”
“Are we really doing this now?” Rubi said.
The bot buzzed. “Cooperating goddammit whose side are you what are you—”
“Yes, in other words.” Rubi’s next words were subbed. “Everyone, this is Luciano Pox. Luce, this is everyone.”
Javier’s jaw worked. “Pox is—”
“The real one, stupid, not the zombie patient the wealth-grubbers flatlined forty-nine minutes ago.”
“Luce,” Rubi said, lacing a warning into her voice.
The cam buzzed against the flesh of Gimlet’s palm. “I know, I know, don’t say stupid. Or zombie. Désolé, everyone. Like I fucking care.” A pale pink skeletoon with a frizz of ginger hair sketched itself into their displays.
“Pox! He’s an AI after all?” said Javier.
“You people clearly don’t know artificial intelligences when they bite you on the ass. Or save it, as the case may be. Boogeyman apps with homicidal tendencies? You paranoid, pathetic, xenophobic apes—”
“Perhaps the software doth protest too much,” Javier replied.
That’s not Macbeth, Gimlet thought, randomly.
“Who the fuck are all these people?” The camera, in Gimlet’s hand, was getting hot. “They part of my face-to-face?”
“Luciano Pox,” said Anselmo Javier. “You are ordered to cycle into powersave mode. You will be cached and analyzed—”
“Ordered?” Hyena laugh, edged with madness.
“My theory is that Luce is a polter,” Rubi said. “If so, he’s a sapient being—”
“His rights evaporated when he died, counselor.”
She raised a brow. “The right to productive longevity covers the possibility of computer-assisted continuous consciousness. Superhoomin Test Cohort Six versus #Triage Protocols Inc., 2072.”
Javier’s lip curled. “Your so-called client is a naysayer of unknown origin looking to sabotage your own goddamned pet project, in case you’ve forgotten.”
Luce’s toon ran a hand through thin strands of hair, frowning at Javier. “I … strongly dislike … you.”
Then his toon shivered. Once, twice. “Rubi. Rubi, help! Goat’s got its horns in me again.”
The camera rebooted in Gimlet’s hand.