THE SURFACE—TAMPICO DISPUTED TERRITORY
MIAMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Tampico owed its continued existence to one of the great Clawback megaphilanthropists, Ayobami Kione.
While governments in the early twenty-first argued over infographics depicting Earth’s potential sea rise, Kione was leveraging the failing economy of the US, hiring out-of-work engineers, designers, and anyone, certified or not, with a gift for invention.
Mustering minimum-wage armies—and, as the Setback worsened, work-for-food volunteers by the tens of thousands—Kione’s teams printed and installed berms of artificial bedrock across hundreds of miles of the Florida coast, shoring up all the storm-facing shoreline they could access.
“We had the land rush, the gold rush, the oil rush,” Kione soapboxed. “Get your denial behind you and start banking on carbon!”
Kione hadn’t minded getting his hands dirty. Archival footage showed him driving old-style trucks, deploying HESCO barrier along threatened beaches. Everyone remembered one unforgettable viral share: the billionaire, designer pants legs ankle-deep in floodwater, throwing a chant of “High and dry! High and dry!” into the teeth of a killing wind as volunteers tried to outbuild a coming storm surge.
High they had managed, mostly. As for dry … well. Florida wasn’t Northern Europe: its foundation was porous limestone, its underlying nature swampy. Winds and flood came, stronger by the year. The people who stayed in Tampico embraced the risk.
Florida had terrible weather, a tendency to dysentery outbreaks, ongoing malaria problems, and far too much sun. Its hurricanes were too big, its freshwater supply too small. Its preadolescent lemming rate was triple that of any other megacity.
The region had been #triaged twice by Global Oversight auditors in Hyderabad and Shanghai, cut off from resupply lotteries and the capital pool.
But its inhabitants had branded themselves extremophiles, refusing relocation. They took in refugees from the Caribbean and California diasporas, crowdfunded their own reclamation projects, and kept up with global carbon-fixing targets, keeping their user agreements to a system that was trying to starve them out.
Tampico was, reputedly, as tough as EastEuro. An anarchy with resonances of the honor culture of the American South, it embraced its decrepit infrastructure and nurtured combative people. Extremophiles didn’t just mean they’d survived hurricanes; it was how they claimed to live.
Rubi was, as such, shocked to fly over old Miami and see an ordinary—if admittedly run-down—city, with a cheerful gathering of sim fans and Bounceback supporters waiting behind a marked perimeter.
As they disembarked from the plane, the crowd raised a cheer.
Rubi waved automatically, fighting a yawn. She and Frankie had spent a bouncy flight across the Atlantic playing chess. Gimlet had slept—freshening up for the fight—but Rubi had been too excited and stirred up to settle.
Frankie had confided that her runaway parent, Sangria, was somewhere in Tampico. Even now the child was scanning the onlookers as if she expected to spot a familiar face. When it was obvious no mother figure was going to burst from the throng, she retreated into stony silence. Gimlet put out a supporting hand, only to get it smacked.
A pair of black vans with tinted windows, relics from the days when important personages went everywhere in private transport, were waiting. Two women got out: a Mer Delores Ruiz, tagged Tampico City Management, and Commodore Juanita Bell, @GlobalSec.
An actual soldier? Rubi felt a mix of unease and awe.
Beside her, Anselmo stiffened.
Ruiz spoke first, addressing Rubi and Gimlet. “Welcome to Tampico.” Her voice was warm, primed for the cameras even now flocking toward them. “Our city is excited about hosting the Bastille launch. We have a state-of-the-art gym primed and ready to go.”
“It’s an honor to be here,” Gimlet said, velvet-smooth and regal, already half in character.
“The SeaJuve oxygen project launches in an hour. The prologue for Bastille will go ninety minutes after that. The login queue for extras is…” Ruiz shared numbers. Tens of thousands of people were already waiting to play.
“Looks like your villain gambit’s going to work, Gimlet,” Rubi subbed.
“My motives are pure, remember?”
“Break the almighty tie?”
“I just want one more dance.”
Gesturing, Ruiz ushered the two of them, along with Frankie, into the lead car. Juanita Bell’s toon came along for the ride, even as, in the flesh, she cut Anselmo from the pack and ushered him into the second vehicle.
“What’s going on?” Rubi subbed.
“Agent Javier is being offered other caseload opps,” the virtual version of Bell said.
Maybe Drow’s cynicism was finally catching; Rubi found that she wasn’t entirely surprised.
“Excuse me?” Gimlet said.
“This is a one-of-a-kind case. The ramifications are alarming,” Ruiz said.
“The situation exceeds Agent Javier’s level of expertise,” Bell agreed. “The theory that your Luce Pox is an offworld polter—”
“Anselmo’s theory,” Rubi put in, a little outraged.
“He will be rewarded for the insight. Meanwhile, the breach here in Tampico suggests there may be other polters operating in Sensorium. Add that to the Preadolescent Affairs investigation and Javier’s friction with—well, with you three—”
A pulse of guilt, over the strikes she’d handed Anselmo during their argument. “So, he helps uncover this huge thing, and now he’s being kicked to the curb.”
“Small cases for small fry,” Gimlet said, voice cold. “Big gigs for big fish.”
“The global job market is a meritocracy for a reason.” Juanita bared her teeth. “But unicorn hunters who actually find something—it’s a badge. Javier will level. Meanwhile, I hoped you’d introduce me to your … client.”
Rubi had crunched all the unknowns, endlessly and pointlessly, on the flight from London.
Aliens. Could it really be?
Suddenly, she wanted Luce to just be the Singularity. Just be humanity’s first true polter. Even a terrorist would be simpler.
If he was from offworld, did that preclude his being entitled to a lawyer?
She spent the flight cycling that question, staring blankly at the chessboard while Frankie brooded about her own problems.
“Why didn’t you cut me loose, too?” she demanded. “I’m small fry.”
“Pox chose you,” Bell replied.
More likely, Luce’s epic gift for being obstreperous meant keeping her on was easier than not.
“What about me and Mada?” Frankie asked. “You can’t broom Preadolescent Affairs from the @PoxWorkingGroup.”
Bell shook her head. “Preadolescents have an undeniable stake in … whatever the Pox entity represents. The young have a constitutional right to a seat at the table. Unless you volunteer to step back—”
“We’re not wrapping,” Frankie said.
Again, the flash of teeth. Bell had a singularly unconvincing smile. “Introducing Pox to too many new people seems unwise in any case.”
Rubi stared out the window at a stand of palm trees, one snapped by wind and dying as it dangled. A large blue-and-yellow bird perched on the broken back of its central trunk, grooming its feathers. It looked, ever so slightly, like Crane.
“Okay, let’s talk to him,” she said.
Everyone settled more comfortably into their respective limousine seats. Frankie donned her immersion helmet. Then everyone dove.
Luce had been loaded into a locked e-state, a single infinite room with mirrored walls. He’d built himself a giant glass table which he’d covered in precious stones: diamonds and rubies, emeralds and sapphires, clusters of glimmering treasure. He was growing one now, an amethyst as big as an ostrich egg, square cut, alive with light.
The group of them materialized around the table. Rubi, Gimlet and Frankie, Juanita, all rendered in nondescript black business suits.
Juanita said, “You’ve led us a merry chase, Mer Pox.”
Us, indeed, thought Rubi. They’d better be giving Anselmo a lot of strokes.
Gimlet covered their mouth, hiding amusement. The thought must have shown on her face.
Luce crushed an amethyst in his hand, sparkling violet grit, and created a shareboard—the table became a starfield, with Proxima centered.
“Is it true?” Rubi asked. “You came from … There’s a ship out near Proxima Centauri?”
“Why ask what you already know? You traced our squadron, didn’t you?”
“Squadron?” Sharp voice, from Juanita.
Luce rolled his eyes like a sulky teenager.
“How many ships—” Juanita began.
“You’ve fallen in with a bad crowd, Cherub-Rubi-advocate-she—” Luce said.
Not a good sign, if he was defaulting to all her tags. Was captivity stressing him out?
“Luce, I know this is a lot of people at once. Let’s take this slow, okay? We’ll ask an easy one.”
Before she could think of an easy one, Juanita said, “What do we call you?”
“Huh? Luce is fine.”
“Luce.” Rubi interposed herself, assuming authority. Advocate, dammit! “This is Juanita Bell. I think she means … what do we call the people in the ship? Ships.”
“Oh. Les blanches … non. Sans sang—”
“Bloodless?” suggested Juanita.
“The Pale,” Luce said, “is probably the English. They’re the Pale.”
“They, not you?”
Luce was starting to hyperventilate a little. “I’m from one of the subject races.”
Subject races. Yikes. Her eyes found Gimlet’s.
“I was rewarded”—wry twist to his voice there—“with digital immortality, for faithful service in the metaphorical mines.”
“Mines.” Gimlet put a protective hand out, between the starfield and their child.
“Why should we believe you’re anything more than a human-built aberration?” Juanita demanded. “A @Freebreed bot, or an emergent sapient?”
“Lady, you asked.” Bonk-bonk-bonk. Rubi threw a silent prayer to the universe that this new player …
… soldier, soldiers mean war, do we even have infrastructure for war, this is escalating so quickly …
… that Juanita wouldn’t realize the bonking meant Stupid, stupid, stupid. “It doesn’t matter to me if you … What’s your phrase? Buy in?”
“You don’t care if we believe you?”
“Buy in, don’t buy in. I don’t give a flying—”
“Luce—” Rubi interrupted, to protect him from antisocial utterance. A beat later, what he’d said actually processed. “Why don’t you care?”
Gimlet said, “Is the invasion … canceled?”
“Alleged invasion,” Juanita said.
“How could you come all this way and not care?” Frankie said.
Luce clapped his hands over his ears, bug-eyed.
“Everyone shush,” Rubi said. “Shush!”
Silence. Luce was panting.
She picked an emerald off the plate table, rolling it on her palm. Mesmerizing winks of light caught his gaze. “Luce. What do you feel like sharing?”
Glowering, he took the emerald, coaxing it to grow and staring at its ever-more-complex facets. “There’s a Pale survey fleet. Out and about, incorporating worlds when they’re workable. Just what they do. Commander’s a minor royal of the Pale, not quite incompetent but not someone who’ll ever really level.”
“Small fry,” Juanita murmured. “So, this royal and his fleet are … just surveying the neighborhood?”
“Nobody would come all this way just for the likes of you. But of course they peek. A glance here, an audit there. See what’s up with the apes while mapping potential installations at … you called it Proxima?”
She nodded, to encourage him.
“On the last Pale flyby, ages ago, you’re all pushing boats around the brinefields, using wind and scraps of canvas. Ruling: the apes are sustainable. Therefore sovereign, therefore—by treaty—inviolate.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Next time, seventy-five years ago by your clock, the probes report you’re all aglow. EM rads, transmitted stories, pictures, messages. Evolving technosphere. You’re launching probes, sending friend requests. But you’re also on the verge of ecosphere flameout. Not so sustainable. And so, still sovereign? Maybe not. You’re working on restoring balance; anyone can see that. Can you succeed? Maybe, maybe not. Odds are good you’re about to choke on your own invention … mammals generally do. What’s the term? You’re low-hanging fruit.”
Juanita opened her mouth and Rubi kicked her ankle.
“So, our fleet commander says throw out a line. They send. Eleven of us. Diplomats and advisors and assessors and a linguist, gatherers of data—”
“Spies,” muttered Juanita.
Luce broke off and Rubi shot her a glare.
“Yeah, spies and saboteurs,” Luce said. “Checking in. Are you failing? Do you need help?”
“Help failing?”
“Our fleet commander’s the type who cheats at cards. Anyway, if you fail, with or without our help, it’s only … what’s your word? Humane. To throw you a lifeline.”
“And by a lifeline, you mean we become one of these subject races,” Gimlet said. Their tone had that deceptive-sounding wryness that implied a desire to do violence.
Luce shrugged. “Slavery’s better than suffocating, isn’t it?”
“You tell me,” Rubi said.
He bonked his hands together. Three times, six, then nine. “What’s service, set against extinction?”
Rubi felt the hair on her arms rise. “And that’s how it went for you? Your people?”
He scrubbed his arms over his face, like a tired three-year-old. “Who even remembers?”
Juanita said, “You admit the Pale intentions are hostile.”
“Don’t get hoity. You people spy on everyone, all the time. A place and transcript for everyone, and every last fart filed in its proper place.” Pink spots rose on Luce’s pale virtual cheeks. “And who are you to talk hostile to me? In we came. Invited. The Sign Up Here! Transmissions are in your goddamned all-knowing Haystack. And before anyone’s even backed up, suddenly all your dumbsmarts, your antivirals, the #malware detection. We’re swarmed!
“In fifteen seconds, my team’s torn apart, shredded, dead and hashed and gone. All friend requests emphatically rejected. People I knew for centuries. All because you habitually victimize each other on the internet.”
#Survivorguilt. Could an uploaded personality have that? She wondered what Drow would say.
“Invite us in, tear us apart. Assholes. Talk to me of hostile?”
“You survived,” Rubi said.
“Small fry, you said. Runt, they tagged me. Too small to bother with … but too shiny to forget about. Just right for fun and games,” he said.
Attacked. Repeatedly. She felt tears threatening. “Luce, I’m sorry.”
“My team lead—as you’d call ’em—says to me as it’s dying: Stay on task. I have to obey, don’t I? But fucking how? Hey, Luce, just do the work of ten specialists. Go ahead, Luce, hack humanity.
“So, I try, I try, but you have system protects everywhere and four different currencies and this unworkable poll-driven government and the department of AI fucking paranoia running around trying to figure out if I’m poisoning the water supply. The #triage goat keeps looting my briefcase so I can’t really learn how you people work. I can’t transmit, I can’t get upgrades, I can’t get help. And you, Rubi, you say it’s seizures.
“Do the work of a whole team, Luce, while the whole world is giving you strikes and ads and Wrong, Luce, shut up, Luce, don’t be antisocial, Luce. I’m not a fucking people person, okay?”
He was yelling by now. The emerald had grown to the size of a basketball. He pressed it to his forehead; the sim rendered his knuckles as white.
“You know, I feel better.”
Rubi grinned. “Never underestimate the value of a good rant.”
“It’s been a long shift.”
“Speaking of which. I have another commitment.”
“Simming for SeaJuve?”
“Yeah. Six-hours in game, plus I have to sleep and fuel. Gimlet, too.”
His gaze passed over Gimlet without showing interest, coming back to Juanita. “Not leaving me alone with … her?”
“No. But Luce, can we please, please try to streamline this?”
“How?”
“Give Commodore Bell something to work with while I’m occupied.”
“Yeah-yeah-yeah-smart okay I get it.”
“What if we take turns? One person at a time, one ask at a time. Each person gets one question. If you can’t or don’t want to answer—for now—you say pass and we’ll go on to the next. No Shut up, Luce, no You’re wrong, Luce.”
“No strikes?”
“No strikes. But if you can answer, you do, fully as possible. Even if it seems stupid.”
“One query at a time.”
“Just one. And if you need a break, say so. Or if you get scared or overwhelmed—”
“Ads, ads, ads.”
“Yeah. I’ll step in.”
Luce made a lump of copper ore, flecked and shining.
Juanita subbed, “@PoxWorkingGroup: Why are you babying him?”
Rubi replied, “Would you rather deal with him saying Fuck you and Why should I for ten hours while we’re gone?”
“Your shift’s six.”
“A woman’s gotta sleep,” Rubi said. “Listen, Commodore. They—the Pale—are a decade out. You can spend a few weeks coddling Luce.”
A flinty-eyed stare. Then: “Agreed.”
Should’ve said months. Rubi asked, “Everyone okay with this?”
Luce transformed the clumps of diamonds into chairs facing a stage. He climbed up onto it, holding a microphone made of faceted amber gems.
“Showtime,” he said, and the questions began.