THE SURFACE—WESTEURO
METRO PARIS
Going viral was a vintage term for a snowballing newscycle, coined in the early days of the Setback. Back then a feed—be it politics, disaster, even something trivial like footage of a sloth—would capture millions of viewers. Such feeds established a sort of cybernetic immortality, resurrecting whenever new users discovered their putative delights.
What astounded Anselmo was that back then, stories themselves could accumulate proto-strokes—likes and favorites, they were called. Gathering social capital with every share, superstar content rarely kicked value back to its creators.
Mandatory archiving and data #triage had relegated those zombie shares to historical databases, niches like the Meme Hall of Fame. But new material still caught the world’s attention. Right now, it was footage of Cherub Whiting making her three-point parkour transition to the café balcony.
Tackling an armed @Freebreeder, with no apparent regard for personal safety. People would always heart altruism and courage. Rubi’s Cloudsight score had broken seventy-five. She was no longer riding her legendary father’s coattails: she had leveled into true celebrity.
If only he’d been on scene himself!
Here, in the flesh, above the plaza where the attack had taken place, Anselmo found her disheveled and congested.
“Counterclockwise?” A paramedic revolved her wrist. “Good. Clockwise?”
An obedient patient. In-game, she always leveled from an urchin into a paladin of sorts. Such storylines played well with Bouncebackers.
Rubi’s hammer-and-tongs tunic was smeared with iron-flecked dust from the balcony rail. The chestnut skin between her collarbones was bruised by close-range impact with the tear-gas load.
Lucky not to crack her sternum. Anselmo directed his gaze away, lest feeds catch him staring at her chest.
As he waited, he scanned the police activity in the square. Sixty security giggers, summoned by WestEuro police, Global Anti-Terror, and @Interpol, had cordoned the area, coordinating with drone support. More experienced officers filtered witnesses into groups: some needed medical treatment, while others could be shuttled off-site. The latter were headed into Sensorium to give witness statements.
The search had caught four @Freebreeders, including Rubi’s shooter. The terrorists had cut out their RFIDs. Teams were combing the scene for collaborators … and for Luciano Pox. If he was human, if he was here, they’d find him.
Anselmo doubted that Pox had any flesh to find.
He queried incident management about the pregnant civilian and her family. Mother and baby were fine. Victim-service specialists were bidding for the chance to support them through trauma recovery.
Threatening to abduct pregnant women was the flagship strategy for the @Freebreed pushback against population rationing and universal mandatory birth control. Contemptible move by contemptible people. They were hazy on precisely how the global standard of living could be adjusted to allow for the unlimited pursuit of parenthood.
A pang of bitterness. He’d been within ticking distance of the fatherhood box when his own pack #triaged him.
It wasn’t that Anselmo minded trying to trade up, necessarily. His pack had been complacent, lacking in ambition. Lately, he’d been flirting with a pair of sexy greentower architects, high-flyers from Beijing. But that wouldn’t go anywhere unless he unlocked a passport to Asia … and he needed another bump in his @Interpol career track.
His eye fell on Rubi. Rising Cloudsight rating. Notable do-gooder. The architects wanted superstars.
Rubi is bossy, though, and comes bundled with a famously insane oldfeller.
Anselmo wondered: how much longer could Drow Whiting survive without late-stage life extension? His suicide attempts meant he wasn’t entitled to emergency medical treatment.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Romancing Rubi wouldn’t be terribly risky.
Plan A remained exposing Pox—whatever he was. Snoping a real unicorn would get Anselmo out of Europe’s used-up shitholes. If Pox was a sapient AI, so much the better.
The other theory Anselmo was pursuing, about Luce Pox, was both outlandish and vastly more frightening.
Finally the paramedic was done. Rubi collected her satchel of worldlies, said her thank-yous.
“Can we go?” She gestured at the apartment door.
“Unless you prefer to jump down to ground level.”
Raspy chuckle. “Emphatic no.”
“Après vous.” A narrow stairwell took them through the café’s dry storage, then to the park. She blinked as they stepped into sunlight. Her eyes were bloodshot, flooded crimson around the hazel irises. Anselmo remembered a vampire who’d killed him in a Beijing horror sim.
“Are … How are you feeling?”
She flexed her ice-wrapped fist. “Never actually hit anyone before.”
“And?”
The reddened eyes flooded, but she didn’t cry. “Still crunching. Anyway. You think my client is a self-aware software super-entity who’s going to slaughter us all?”
“Please don’t say such things aloud.”
“My throat’s raw. I can’t subvocalize.”
Anselmo wasn’t about to share his other theory with Pox’s civilian advocate. Instead, he said, “If Luciano Pox is an app, he carries markers for true sapience.”
“Markers for a guy with severe mental illness,” she countered.
“His presence here, the venn with the timing of the attack…”
“Why would he ally with terrorists?”
He gestured at the Jardin. “Pox advocates martial law. Terrorism pushes that agenda in the polls.”
“And what would the @Freebreeds want with a sapient sidekick?”
“Jamming an area this big takes coordination, speed. Shutting down cameras, uplinks, user implants, diverting drones, and selectively capturing footage of the attack? Perfect job for a strong AI—”
Rubi had stopped. Stopped walking and, from her expression, stopped listening.
Anselmo had taken her through the café’s side door, but even so a few hundred civilians were waiting beyond the police line. A few called Rubi’s name, the better to zoom in on her vampire eyes.
She raised her satchel, lifting it into a hug over her chest to hide the bruising. Her hand drifted to the trademark hexagon of gold beads at her temple.
“Price you pay for going vigilante, I’m afraid.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I acted on instinct.”
“So, it’s true. Canadians will apologize for absolutely anything.”
She gave him a red-eyed squint. People rarely got his jokes.
Smile, then. He knew his smile was a good one. “It might have turned out worse if you hadn’t.”
Squaring her shoulders, she gave the crowd a tentative wave. Someone raised a cheer.
“Let’s catch a ride out with the witnesses.” Anselmo steered her from the taped perimeter toward the epicenter of police action. Busses with darkened windows awaited, queued up to convey civilians out of the crime scene.
As each witness boarded the transport, they were able to relax into its padded chairs and drop into Sensorium. There they’d meet an interview app, specialized statement-taking software. Gentle, unbiased, thorough, and designed to avoid leading questions, the app would capture everyone’s freshest memory of the incident.
Most of the passengers were already diving. Anselmo pinged the others with his badge and his most forbidding look, conducting Rubi to a seat.
“My dad’s calling.” Canadian or not, she wasn’t asking permission.
“Go ahead,” Anselmo said. She had already glazed.
He checked his own snowballing newsfeeds and policing shareboards. The footage of Rubi had come from a city traffic drone, diverted from outside the blackout zone. Unlike the others within the terrorists’ sphere of operations, it hadn’t gone dark.
The drone had already copied its black box to forensics. It was flying to a crime lab, even now, to turn itself and its camera in for physical inspection. Anselmo signed up to receive the results in realtime. Then he took a closer look at the actual vid.
The vantage point, chosen by whoever had commandeered the drone, afforded a view of the square and the Dauphin statue. Rubi came into frame when she swung up to the bronze horse’s rump and assaulted the pink-clad @Freebreeder.
The drone had been purposed by the terrorists to showcase the sniper, then, as she gassed the thoroughfare.
He copied all the information they had so far, sharing it with Kora, a project manager at the Greenwich lab who was helping him track Luciano Pox.
The bus driver sent Anselmo a query as the vehicle lurched into motion. “Destination, please?”
“I’m back,” Rubi said.
“Papa okay?”
Guarded expression; a nod. She ran a finger over that hexagonal grouping of gold beads secured by short, tight dreadlocks against her left temple.
Fiddling with the beads looked like a stress tell.
How did one chat about a parent who was a celebrity and a convicted criminal? “He already heard what’s happened?”
“He’s not upset.” She coughed. “Apparently, he approves of hitting back.”
“You’re surprised.”
“It’s never come up.”
“Truly?” Nobody had much in the way of privacy. Despite Drow Whiting’s various efforts to fill his transcripts with chaff—song lyrics, koans, and pop culture references—the Whitings had none at all.
The world knew Drow had been sexually assaulted as a young man. Had father and daughter truly never discussed it?
If they had, it would be in the public domain. He’d check her transcript.
Rubi stared out the window. Brooding?
“Configuring optimal route for passenger delivery,” the bus told Anselmo. “Your destination?”
“Shall we go back to my office, Rubi?”
A tired smile. “I’m jet-lagged now. I’d like to go home.”
“Destination?” the bus repeated.
“Evidence and processing,” Anselmo subbed.
“Drop-off in fifteen.”
He opened his mouth to share his plans and then closed it again. Rubi had already fallen asleep.