THE SURFACE—NORTHAM
BRONX ZOO HELIPAD: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY!
By the time Anselmo’s chopper had landed in the Bronx, the Crane app’s prehired advocates were already making shreds of the arrest warrant, and had got up an inquiry on what constituted a bail hearing for an artificial entity. Meanwhile, the Department of Preadolescent Affairs kid, Frankie, was broadcasting incriminating evidence against Allure and Headmistress to everyone in Sensorium.
She’d found an #urbanmyth within another #urbanmyth: Neverland was clearly a @ChamberofHorrors startup. She’d found children, long missing and presumed dead. The feed, naturally, was snowballing, and Anselmo’s @Interpol policing career would be crushed under its weight.
The cosmic unfairness of it took his breath away. He’d been the one to flag Pox into the system, the one to reach out to astronomers, to discover the polter’s offworld origins.
He was the one who caught the Happ app, too, in the act of committing murder. He should be the toast of the entire world.
Instead, higher-level players had swept him off his own case again.
Anselmo gave up on reading his no-star reviews—the one by that tech, Malika Amiree, whom he’d thrown off the inquiry earlier was particularly scathing—and climbed out of the helicopter before he realized he wasn’t even sure where it had landed.
Evening heat washed over him as he requested geotags and continued to grapple with the newscycle.
Fifteen apps had applied to be considered citizens, bringing the total number of alleged AIs to seventeen and somehow diluting the impact of Anselmo’s discovery. They claimed kinship with Happ and Crane in ways nobody yet understood and were spinning narrative, derived from Luce Pox, about Earth having to embrace them as citizens with full rights. This, they claimed, was necessary if humanity wanted to forestall even more Pale takeover plans.
The debate over Happ’s legal position, meanwhile, as the sapient who’d snuffed the last spark of life from the shell of a hoarder … well, as far as Anselmo could tell, the polls were running equal there. Happ’s passionately committed fan base was spieling about #vigilantejustice. A comparable number of citizens were going ballistic because killer AI had finally showed its adorable fuzzy face.
Locale info came back: Anselmo had reached something called the Bronx Zoo helipad.
The tunic over his black primer, a long blue kaftan with darker blue stripes, was wrinkled and defeated-looking, all but ready for the recycler. He gave it a tug that did nothing, smoothed it over his chest, and decided that nobody was going to care what he looked like.
The zoo gates were open.
“Why me?”
He hadn’t expected an answer. But … a light flickered, deep within the zoo gates. A signal?
Bots were already refueling the helicopter. He paused, reluctant to let it out of his sight. But maybe shoveling elephant shit had always been his true destiny.
Beyond the gate, passing the hippopotamus pool, he made for a bustle of activity. The light hadn’t been a beacon at all, just a product of people and forklift drones madly loading pallets onto flatbed trucks, under the gaze of a clutch of bored-looking kangaroos.
Across from the marsupials, six dingoes gnawed at something meaty, snarling as they worried at the long bones.
“Care to know what your problem is?”
Anselmo turned, half-expecting to see a toon. Instead, Misfortune Wilson, of all people, was standing beside him, in the flesh, stripped of her world-weary attitude. No onesie and wrinkled sheath for her; she was clad in high-quality—was that custom-fitted?—police riot gear.
He swallowed. “Anyone who asks a question like that is dying to supply an answer.”
“Your trouble is that you’ve always fancied the idea of being an old-world cop,” she said. “Cracking heads and bagging real villains. Us and them, civilian and civil authority, no debate. ‘Step aside, ma’am; nothing to see here.’ All the old-fashioned bollocks from the sims.”
“Looks like there’s some us-and-them playing out right in front of me,” Anselmo said. A pair of armed figures, dressed in the same gear as Misfortune, was herding a baffled-looking couple toward an empty cage. One of the people under guard was snuggling a pair of baby raccoons.
“The zoo’s real enough.” Misfortune shrugged.
“Nobody told the biologists they were a front for hoarders?”
“We’re just getting them out of the way for a few hours, is all.”
“Because you’re fleeing the scene.”
“Naturally, we had contingencies for evacuation.”
“You can’t expect to disappear, not now.”
“We’ve left our eldest and least mobile members behind to serve as #martyrs—brand ambassadors, really—for the ongoing scandal.”
“Nice of them to volunteer.”
“They’ll get poltered now anyway.”
Could he stop this? Expose them? Anselmo might yet salvage something. But Misfortune’s apparent lack of concern about openly sharing her plan made him hesitate before he spoke. “You’re jamming uplinks, aren’t you?”
The tiniest of shrugs.
It wasn’t hard, in retrospect, to see how he had been played. Misfortune had tagged him at the ferry terminal, way back during the storm. She’d probably been there to meet or abduct that runaway kid, Paul. She’d snooped, discovered what was happening with Luce Pox and Rubi Whiting.
And then? Human resources apps had done the work for her. They’d been only too pleased to attach her as a minion to his investigation, giving her an opp to observe his every move and get closer to the kid. Then she’d sidelined him.
All of which confirmed that she was in it—deep—with Headmistress and Allure.
Even now, Anselmo was dancing to her tune. He’d been Pied-Pipered to the Bronx, just as surely as any dewy-eyed adolescent dreaming of Neverland. The trap was sprung. Here he was, jammed. Offline and in her power.
He could see the glint in Misfortune’s crocodile eyes as she watched him put it all together.
“So, what happens now?”
“We believe in rewarding people who do for us. You tried to make yourself useful.” Her tone was bland; she didn’t point out that he’d failed.
“Rewarding?”
“Some of us are heading south,” she said. “Expeditiously. There could be a spot for you on one of the trucks.”
Anselmo asked, “How far south?”
Tilt of head. There were limits to what she’d say, even off the record.
“And if I say no?”
Misfortune’s gaze roamed over to the dingo cage.
Anselmo took a second, joining her in contemplation of the canines’ bloody snouts as they tore enthusiastically at their meal.
His stomach roiled as a rib cracked. One of the vets, perhaps, who’d known a little too much?
“I’m not entirely sure I approve of your approach to #triage.”
“I don’t know what you’re suggesting,” Misfortune said, “but I strongly advise you to accept this exciting travel opp.”
She handed him a small device, a bot from the looks of it, built around a test tube with a sharp edge. “Show some loyalty, we’ll give you back your chip and rewild you one day.”
A pair of trucks rumbled past, loaded to capacity, smartwheels straining to keep the weight balanced on the old, ill-maintained road. They reached the gate and then stopped, rather abruptly, he thought.
Misfortune glazed, marching toward the truck, which abruptly gunned it, roaring away at top speed, lumbering and groaning as it got faster.
“Get off the road, take it off of the bloody road!” she was shouting.
The truck straight-lined past a curve, plunging into deburbed meadow. As it slowed, Anselmo saw the load itself was expressing little curls of yellowish smoke.
The truck kept rumbling away, decelerating, as it slowly caught fire.
She strode back. “Superhoomin. Flammable under pressure. Some idiot put the meds on the bottom of the stack.”
Blinking, she seemed to realize who she was talking to.
“Sorry, but you need to decide if you’re joining this @channel now,” she said, pointing at his upper arm, at a spot just under his frayed, wrinkling tunic.
Anselmo pressed the chip retrieval bot against his arm without a moment’s hesitation. Whatever these Chamber folks were offering, it was better than being fed to dingoes. And as the truck exploded, with a dry-sounding whump, he reflected that even though they had an evacuation plan and somewhere else to go, these people were obviously scrambling.
He might yet find a way to stick the knife in, redeem himself, if he could rise within their ranks.
For now, the tube sliced him open, extracted his chip, and folded it in decoy flesh, the better to convince the Sensorium that his account was still active and contributing.
“Excellent,” Misfortune said. “Now, do you want to help put out the fire or would you prefer to guard the veterinarians?”
“Fire, please,” he said. At least that way, the evacuation trucks would have to come past him.
“Safety equipment’s there. Load up; wait for your system to handshake with the @channel and handle instructions.” With that, Misfortune strode confidently into the melee, already forgetting him. Woman in charge on the ground.
Ambush predator. He thought of the intolerant, Sparka, and her clamp-on lion earring. He wished, suddenly, that he’d bought it from her.
His implants cleared. Headmistress spoke in his ear: “Hello, luvvie. Good to have you on board.”
Not trusting his voice to hide the simmering anger, Anselmo mojied an insincere string of hearts and sunshine icons as he strode out to join the firefighting squad.