THE SURFACE—TAMPICO DISPUTED TERRITORY
MCDIZNAZON ANIMAL KINGDOM PLAY OPP/BIORESERVE
Tampico maintained its bioreserve within an antique theme park, an in-the-flesh entertainment opp for kids. The park had once been exclusively branded to a media multinational, McDiznazon, that funded a good chunk of the city’s densification. Their social capital was high due to their continued production of entertainment sims like Rewilding Rescue.
Frankie had offered to mash-up play with a little peer polling, catching a ride inland, and co-opting the ever-surly Misfortune to serve as temporary guardian as she visited the park. Usually, she didn’t work solo, but the Luce case was code-red serious. That, and the park’s immaculate reputation for both safety and in-person wonders, led Gimlet and GranMarie to greenlight the field trip.
Anything to keep me from asking questions about Dada Rollsy.
Now here she was, staring at a statue of a McDiz founder, some oldfeller hand in hand with one of his own creations, a mouse that came to his elbow. The promenade thronged with schools of kids and families.
Park staff and wildlife managers roamed the paths, clad in bright red jumpsuits. They wore printed badges tagging competencies: park knowledge, tour guide, first aid, hurricane procedures, food service, entertainment, mechanical repair, monkey expert, roller-coaster operation, history lecture …
Misfortune glowered at two middle-aged women, both in helmets, blazing with unlocked badges. “These people intolerant?”
“So?” Frankie said. It made sense, as far as she was concerned. Intolerants could talk to kids as equals, since they all used wearables for Sensorium diving.
“Just noticing.” Side-eye and a bland shrug. She teased a strand of black yarn from her primer sleeve, winding it around her fingers.
Misfortune wouldn’t want to get popped by a kid for throwing shade, as they used to say, at the disabled.
Start with the aquarium? Frankie found a trailhead, pondering its guide markers. There was a domed rainforest, boreal species habitat, Monkey Jungle, a greenhouse, and a path to a concert stage.
Drow should play a concert here. Laughable idea—the preserve was far too clean and shiny for the MadMaestro.
She knew the Drow Whiting. They were … chummy.
She flashed on his words: I’m running away from home, kid.
Frankie had printed up a blazer, a reversible jacket currently showing the Department of Preadolescent Affairs logo. It made her officially available to any kid who wanted to talk. Until then, she could explore.
She hopped a people-mover to the Amazon Rainforest. Misfortune tailed her unenthusiastically.
“She’s not letting me out of her sight,” she subbed.
“Don’t worry about Misfortune,” the Poppet app replied.
“You made promises,” Frankie said.
“I’ll keep them.”
As she passed through the exhibit airlock, Frankie forgot about her watcher dog.
The greenery in this sim forest was unlike anything she’d seen in England. A curtain of waxy leaves, glossy jade curls, dangled overhead. Vines climbed trees, reaching for the kaleidoscope fractals of the greenhouse roof. There were plants with bells that held water. Cases of frogs, snakes, and salamanders were integrated into viewpoints along the path.
Frankie paused in front of a python terrarium, coming nose to nose with a snake curled on a branch. It blinked at her, a caged alien, secure in the knowledge that it had nothing to aspire to and nowhere to go.
Live audio feeds and screens built into the viewpoints offered learning modules about all the species on display.
“Feed the sloth?” A zookeeper offered her a drone controller.
“Thanks,” Frankie said, transmitting her pilot license and trying to remember what a sloth was.
She spotted it just as she hovered into the trees. Coarse hairy pillow, with a … with a smile! She zoomed in, extending a morsel of banana with a grab-and-go limb. The drone’s hand was styled like that of the cartoon mouse.
The creature accepted the fruit with regal aplomb.
Mesmerized, Frankie watched it chew.
“You’re DPA?” Her first consult of the day sidled up beside her. Brown-skinned, with rainbow-beaded hair, they wore a quirky patchwork smock that had to be handmade from recycled rags. Topping the ensemble was a printed set of McDiz mouse ears.
“I’m Frankie,” she said. “Child ombudsman, she-her.”
“My name’s Kansas. Ei-eir-em.”
She stepped aside, offering em a turn at the drone controls. Working the rig with deft familiarity, ei snagged a bit of pineapple and proffered it.
“You live here?” she asked. The sloth took a delicate nibble of the fruit.
“Come to the park all the time. Sometimes, I get apprentice gigs in the capybara enclosure.”
“Wow!”
More kids gathered. Misfortune kept a respectful distance.
Kansas asked, “I saw you were tooned into the Sable Hare when that engineer got killed?”
Frankie felt a rush of relief—of course everyone would want to hear about the @Freebreed attack. It would be a perfect ramp for streaming into her poll.
“Me, my parent Gimlet,” she said, “and both the Whitings, Drow and Rubi.”
A murmur.
“Do we show up in the newsflows? Mada won’t let me watch replays.”
Kansas let eir tongue loll, eloquent comment on over-protective parents.
More kids emerged from other attractions. Misfortune was contemplating a cluster of fish—piranha, according to the tags—schooling around in an artificial river.
Frankie worked the spotlight, relating, in hushed tones, the surprise of being tooned right in above the apparently normal sailor before he went berserk, swinging the strut like a baseball bat. She told them about seeing an edge of metal bolt striking the back of the victim’s skull. His knees had hit the rail with a chunking sound that she could feel, even now, in her bones. She described the smear of blood on the ship’s deck.
“And then?”
“Then, of course, my parent kicked me out of the sim. I can’t review the footage until I unlock three modules of trauma counseling.”
Mutters, grim faces, more tongue lolls.
A thrum of guilt. It was so easy to make Gimlet the bad guy.
“Rubi Whiting says the @Freebreeders want SeaJuve to fail,” Frankie said.
The kids shared uneasy glances.
“Isn’t it time some of us got to have siblings?” a girl asked.
A few kids crossed their fingers in agreement, gestural moji meaning +1.
Frankie had once watched a vintage bit of nature footage with Sang: baby storks throwing each other out of the nest to starve. That, it had seemed, was all she needed to know about sisters and brothers.
But now, with all her parents caught up in Rollsy’s illness, she imagined having someone else. Someone her own age, someone of the pack, who wouldn’t die or leave …
One willowy-limbed girl, black of skin, with an eyepatch, said, “We can’t have sibs or rewild the oceans if they can’t breathe, right?”
“If we wait for nature to rejuve, it’ll be our kids or grandchildren doing the rewilding.”
“If we get to have children.”
“Mam says without SeaJuve, we’ll be choking on old Boomer car exhaust in ten years.”
The comment got a few nods, followed by counterarguments from kids who’d studied ecology. The word cloud rose; DPA analysts would crunch it.
I should’ve done this in the aquarium, Frankie thought. With sharks as a backdrop.
“What if there were other #consequences for SeaJuve failing?”
Quiet fell.
Nobody loved #consequences. #Consequences venned with #rationing. #Consequences meant getting popped when you gave in to an antisocial impulse.
“Like what?”
She shrugged. “What if we had to basically … go into managed care?”
“We who?”
“Everyone.”
“Managed by who?”
“@ChamberofHorrors!”
Outbreak of laughter.
“The Singularity!”
Frankie shook her head. “What about a stricter vision of Nannybot? Or … martial law, like in the Clawback?”
The laughter died. Kids shuffled. “Is that likely?”
“If the air stales? We’d need extreme measures,” Frankie said.
“They’d #triage Tampico for sure, then,” said Kansas. Grim murmurs.
“Talk to your schools?” Frankie shared a remote poll. “There’s a DPA participation badge and a stroke for everyone who refers twenty responders.”
“Accept,” they chorused. The kids took turns feeding the sloth until it dozed off; after that, the group dispersed in ones and twos, murmuring as they went.
Kansas stuck with Frankie as they passed into an airlock filled with flowers, some tagged as #extinct in the wild.
Then … butterflies.
A cone-shaped dome rose above them, bounded by a high ceiling. The air was cooler than near the sloth, but it was wet, heavily perfumed by nectar and undertones of vegetable rot.
Text from Misfortune: I’ll wait outside.
Frankie pinged her thumbs-up, pleased.
“See?” subbed Headmistress.
“Get me out from under the all-seeing eye was only half of our deal,” Frankie subbed.
“All in good time. Capture some selfies for your pack.”
She did, marveling as the butterflies wafted around the core of vegetation.
Kansas, beside her, drew a deep breath. “When I get my implants, everything will smell like flowers.”
A delicate brown insect plunged a filament of tongue into an orange trumpet-shaped flower. Another landed on the edge of Frankie’s jumper, pumping yellow-and-blue wings.
“You truly believe we’ll get managed if SeaJuve funding #crashburns?”
Frankie said, “I used to be all about Rewild. Baby Tigger and the whole nine. But … if we’re gonna level up to truly rewilding, we gotta keep the Bouncers from giving up on SeaJuve.”
“The Bouncers. They’re running out of gas.”
That was what Rubi feared, Frankie realized. That her cohort would evolve into another generation of giver-uppers.
Kansas frowned, checking a wrist comm. “My parents are calling. Here’s my e-state, if you ever want to visit.”
Frankie smiled, returning the invite. “Here’s mine.”
“You should go on to the hummingbird habitat.”
“Hummingbirds?”
“It’s beyond. Promise.”
Hummingbirds? She gave Kansas a stroke for the tip and rushed off to see, then moved on to a glassed-in almond grove filled with bees, both the real kind and costumed toon characters from a bee-themed ancient movie. The attraction included a working hive, clear walls through which she could see the bees moving through their hexagonal pop-ins, a hundred thousand workers with a single lifetime gig.
“Out here,” Headmistress said. “Quickly.”
Frankie hurried to the exit, ignoring a young man dispensing honey on printed crackers.
And, finally: “Hey, kiddo.”
“Mama!”
Sangria was lounging against one of the pillars, holding out three or four of the treats.
“Here, eat ’em—that kid gave me a strike for taking more’n my share.”
Frankie stuffed all four crackers in her mouth and piled into a hug. She felt a hesitation in Sang before she returned the embrace. Then it was just a hug, and everything was fine.
“You’re really here on the sly?” Sang said.
“I had to see you.”
“Yeah, your governess said.” Sang smelled a little of pepper, as always, and she had a healing scab on the back of her hand.
“What’s this?”
“Storm cleanup,” she explained. “We were chipping deadfall.”
Frankie traced the raised line gravely, thinking about the @Freebreed terrorist, swinging the beam with the shiny silver bolt. “Might scar.”
“Nah. Let’s hit the roller coaster.” Sang took a path into the depths of a venerable old-school midway, with a Ferris wheel, a carousel, and an intolerant juggler tossing six fiery batons.
Misfortune was nowhere to be seen.
The line for the roller coaster was long. They switched to a tiny riverboat ride.
The honey and cracker crumbs had left a faint sour taste in Frankie’s mouth.
Sang elbowed her companionably. “So—working? On a case? Must be a biggie if they flew you ’cross the pond.”
“Ultra-confidential.”
“That’s okay.” The boat bumped, spraying water.
“Are you subbing with someone?”
“What? No. Sorry. You have my full attention.”
Frankie had had a speech memorized, but now she blurted, “You have to come home, Sang.”
Sang winced. “Chickpea…”
“You do! Or Gimlet and I can stay here. Once Rollsy’s had his surgery—”
Another wince.
Alarm bells. “What?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.”
It had been like this since Rollsy got sick. “Nobody tells me anything.”
“I can’t help you, Chickpea. Rollsy’s the one calls the shots.”
“Nobody froze me out when Granda was dying.”
Was that another flash of guilt?
“Sang.” She tried to keep her voice from wobbling. “Is Rollsy dying?”
A heavy exhalation. “You get to say, when you’re the sick one. We wrote agreements about health care into our nups when we all shacked up. You can’t use me to run around your pack’s firewalls—”
“Our pack!”
“I just mean, with me on the outs.”
“Why?” Frankie tried, involuntarily, to stand, fetching up against the ride’s safety bar. “Why are you on the outs? Is Gimlet keeping you away?”
“No. No!” The boat plunged. Frankie’s stomach flipped. Streaming wind chilled the tears smearing her cheeks.
“Chickpea, you gotta remember that Rolls is a very private person who’s not necessarily entirely comfortable with his body, and—”
“I’m his kid!”
“The pack wants to protect you from the down-and-dirty medical indignities—”
“All you ever do is protect,” she said bitterly. Gimlet, tossing her off Sable Hare. Family-rated games and sims where she couldn’t even have a gun.
“It’s—” Long pause. “It’s our prenup. And you know how it is when you’re young. Everyone afraid you’ll lemming off somewhere to throw yourself into—” Another long pause. “… a volcano—”
She had to be subbing with someone.
“Sang, we need you. Please, please come home. Gimlet will be happy. We’ll get a bigger pop-in, you can meet Rubi—”
“Chickpea, no.”
“You and GranMarie can make Rollsy talk to me.”
“I can’t do any of that.”
They had splashed and jolted their way to the bottom of the incline, and now were climbing again. Frankie was distantly aware that one of her legs was soaked. Beads of water dusted her mother’s hairline.
“Listen, Chickpea. I will always, always love you to bits and pieces—”
“Stop talking like I’m a baby.”
“You are my baby.”
“Not if you’re getting divorced and you’re too chicken to say so and meanwhile you’re hiding in this jungle getting ripped up by hurricanes and rusty nails.”
“You don’t think that’s a little immature—”
The boat crested the rise, and Frankie saw how high up they were—three stories at least. Spread below them were happy-looking packs. Was it all wallpaper? Or were they falling apart, too?
“I’ll tell Gimmles you need more info about Rolls, okay?”
Frankie turned away.
“Can the dramatics, kid—”
“Why are you being like this?” They tipped, dropped, cascading through sprays of water to the base of the coaster. By the time the momentum had bled off, Sang had given up pretending she wasn’t elsewhere. She patted Frankie’s hand mechanically.
They got off the water ride. “The queue for that coaster’s only nine minutes now.”
Frankie crossed her arms. “Mama-Sang, is Rollsy dying? Yes or no?”
Sang closed her eyes. “Yeah. #Triage redlighted the surgery. Waste of resources. I’m sorry.”
“And are we divorcing?”
“I don’t know, Chickpea. Probably.”
“Why’d you go away? Whose fault is it?”
A hesitation? “It isn’t—No. It’s nobody’s—”
Frankie turned and walked away. “You were right,” she subbed to Headmistress. “They need a shock to bring them together.”
Headmistress hummed a warning, pointing. Gimlet was just tooning in.
“Did you have fun?” they asked, and then, looking around: “Where’s your escort?”
Headmistress threw an arrow into Frankie’s peripheral.
“Right there.” She pointed, blindly, and then saw that Misfortune was indeed there, striding closer, holding two sodagels and a McDiz wrap.
“Everything’s in motion again,” Gimlet said. “Get your flesh back to base.”
She nodded, falling into step, accepting the sodagel from Misfortune with numb fingers.
It had worked. Headmistress and Poppet had engineered the meet with Sang, made her show up, and Gimlet was none the wiser.
Too bad it was all for nothing.
“There, there,” Headmistress murmured. “You see how long the leash is?”
“You’ll get away next time,” Poppet agreed. “Give ’em a good scare. Put on a brave face, now.”
Good advice. Frankie popped the gel and reached for the McDiz costume, pasting on a smile. Performing the delight she saw sprayed, for truth or lie, on the mug of every other kid in the park.