by Vernor Vinge
The two stopped at the edge of a clearing. Fred looked at Jerry. “Tsk. Flood Control should be ashamed. There’s not a localizer node within thirty feet.”
“Yeah, Jer. Almost anything could happen here.” Without a complete localizer mesh, nodes could not know precisely where they and their neighbors were. High-rate laser comm could not be established, and low-rate sensor output was smeared across the landscape. The outside world knew only mushy vagueness about this area.
They walked into the clearing. They were deep in a network blind spot, but from here they had a naked-eye view up the hillside, to ground that must surely be within Pyramid Hill. If they continued that way, the Hill would start charging them.
But the twins were not looking at the Hill. Jerry walked to a small tree and squinted up. “In fact, this is an interesting spot. They tried to patch the coverage with an airball.” He pointed into the branches and pinged. The utility view showed only a faint return, an error message. “It’s almost purely net guano at this point.”
Juan shrugged. “The gap will be fixed by tonight.” Around twilight, when aerobots flitted around the canyons, swapping out nodes here and there.
“Well, why don’t we help the County by patching things right now?” Jerry held up a thumb-sized greenish object. He handed it to Juan.
Three antenna fins sprouted from the thing’s top. It was a typical ad hoc node. The dead ones were more trouble than bird poop. “You’ve perv’d this thing?” The node had BreakIns-R-Us written all over it, but perverting networks was harder in real life than in games. “Where did you get the access codes?”
“Uncle Don gets careless.” Jerry pointed at the device. “All the permissions are loaded. Unfortunately, the bottleneck node is still alive.” He pointed upward, into the sapling’s branches. “You’re small enough to climb this, Juan. Just go up and knock down the node.”
“Hmm.”
“Hey, don’t worry. Homeland Security won’t notice.”
In fact, the Department of Homeland Security would almost certainly notice, at least after the localizer mesh was patched. But just as certainly they wouldn’t care. DHS logic was deeply embedded in all hardware. “See All, Know All” was their motto, but what they knew and saw was for their own mission. They were notorious about not sharing with law enforcement. Juan stepped out of the blind spot and took a look at the Sheriff’s Department view. The area around Pyramid Hill had its share of arrests, mostly for enhancement drugs…but there had been nothing hereabouts for several weeks.
“Okay.” Juan came back to the tree and scrambled up about ten feet, to where the branches spread out. The old node was hanging from rotted Velcro. He knocked it free and the twins caused it to have an accident with a rock. Juan shinnied down from the tree. They watched the diagnostics for a moment. Violet mists sharpened into bright spots as the nodes figured out where they and their perved sibling were, and coordinated up toward full function. Now point-to-point, laser routing was available; they could see the property labels all along the boundary of Pyramid hill.
“Ha,” said Fred. The twins started uphill toward the property line. “C’mon, Juan. We’re marked as county employees. We’ll be fine if we don’t stay too long.”
PYRAMID HILL HAD all the latest touchy-feely gear. These were not just phantoms painted by your contact lenses on the back of your eyeballs. On Pyramid Hill there were games where you could ride a Scoochi salsipued or steal the eggs of raptors—or games with warm furry creatures that danced playfully around, begging to be picked up and cuddled. If you turned off all the game views, you could see other players wandering through the woods in their own worlds. Somehow the Hill kept them from crashing into each other.
In Cretaceous Returns, the sound of the free-fall launcher was disguised as thunder. The trees were imaged as towering ginkgoes, with lots of places you couldn’t see through. Juan played the pure visual Cret Ret a lot these days, in person with the twins, and all over the world with others. It had not been an uplifting experience. He had been “killed and eaten” three times so far this week. It was a tough game, one where you had to contribute or maybe you got killed and eaten every time. So Juan had joined the Fantasists Guild—well, as a junior wannabe member. Maybe that would make him clueful. He had already designed a species for Cret Ret. His saurians were quick, small things that didn’t attract the fiercest of the critics. The twins had not been impressed, though they had no alternatives of their own.
As he walked through the ginkgo forest, he kept his eye out for critters with jaws lurking in the lower branches. That’s what had gotten him on Monday. On Tuesday it had been some kind of paleo disease.
So far things seemed safe enough, but there was no sign of his own contribution. They had been fast breeding and scalable, so where were the little monsters? Sigh. Sometime he should check out other game sites. They might be big in Kazakhstan. Here, today…nada.
Juan stumped across the Hill, a little discouraged, but still uneaten. The twins had taken the form of game-standard velociraptors. They were having a grand time. Their chicken-sized prey were Pyramid Hill game bots.
The Jerry-raptor looked over its shoulder at Juan. “Where’s your critter?”
Juan had not assumed any animal form. “I’m a time traveler,” he said. That was a valid type, introduced with the initial game release.
Fred flashed a face full of teeth. “I mean where are the critters you invented last week?”
“I don’t know.”
“Most likely they got eaten by the critics,” said Jerry. The brothers did a joint reptilian chortle. “Give up on making creator points, Juan. Kick back and use the good stuff.” He illustrated with a soccer kick that connected with something that scuttled across their path. That got lots of classic points and a few thrilling moments of quality carnage. Fred joined in and red splattered everywhere.
There was something familiar about this prey. It was young and clever-looking…a newborn from Juan’s own design! And that meant its mommy would be nearby. Juan said, “You know, I don’t think—”
“The Problem Is, None Of You Think Nearly Enough.” The sound was premium external, like sticking your head inside an old-time boom box. Too late, they saw that the tree trunks behind them grew from yard-long claws. Mommy. Drool fell in ten-inch blobs from high above.
This was Juan’s design scaled up to the max.
“Sh—” said Fred. It was his last hiss as a velociraptor. The head and teeth behind the slobber descended from the ginkgo canopy and swallowed Fred down to the tips of his hind talons. The monster crunched and munched for a moment. The clearing was filled with the sound of splintering bones.
“Ahh!” the monster opened its mouth and vomited horror. It was so good—Juan flicker-viewed on reality: Fred was standing in the steaming remains of his raptor. His shirt was pulled out of his pants, and he was drenched in slime—real, smelly slime. The kind you paid money for.
The monster itself was one of the Hill’s largest mechanicals, tricked out as a member of Juan’s new species.
The three of them looked up into its jaws.
“Was that touchy-feely enough for you?” the creature said, its breath a hot breeze of rotting meat. For sure it was. Fred stepped backwards and almost slipped on the goo.
“The late Fred Radner just lost a cartload of points”—the monster waved its truck-sized snout at them—“and I’m still hungry. I suggest you move off the Hill with all dispatch.”
They backed away, their gaze still caught on the monster’s teeth. The twins turned and ran. As usual, Juan was an instant behind them. Something like a big hand grabbed him. “You, I have further business with.” The words were a burred roar through clenched fangs. “Sit down. Let’s chat.”
¡Caray! I have the worst luck. Then he remembered that it had been Juan Orozco who had climbed a tree to perv the Hill entrance logic. Stupid Juan Orozco didn’t need bad luck; he was already the perfect chump. And now the twins were gone.
But
when the “jaws” set him down and he turned around, the monster was still there—not some Pyramid Hill rent-a-cop. Maybe this really was a Cret Ret player! He edged sideways, trying to get out from under the pendulous gaze. This was just a game. He could walk away from this four-story saurian. Of course, that would trash his credit with Cretaceous Returns, maybe drench him in smelly goo. And if Big Lizard took its play seriously, it might cause him trouble in other games. Okay. He sat down with his back to the nearest ginkgo. So he would be late another day; that couldn’t make his school situation any worse.
The saurian settled back and slid the steaming corpse of Fred Radner’s raptor to one side. It brought its head close to the ground, to look at Juan straight on. The eyes and head and color were exactly Juan’s original design, and this player had the moves to make it truly impressive. He could see from its battle scars that it had fought in several Cretaceous hot spots.
Juan forced a cheerful smile. “So, you like my design?”
It flashed yard-long fangs. “I’ve been worse.” The creature shifted game parameters, bringing up critic-layer details. This was a heavy player, maybe even a game cracker! On the ground between them was a dead and dissected example of Juan’s creation. Big Lizard nudged it with a foreclaw. “But the skin texture is from a Fantasists Guild example library. The color scheme is a cliché. The plaid kilt would be cute if it weren’t in all the Epiphany Now ads.”
Juan drew his knees in toward his chin. This was the same crap he had to put up with at school. “I borrow from the best.”
The saurian’s chuckle was a buzzing roar that made Juan’s skull vibrate. “That might work with your teachers. They have to eat whatever garbage you feed them—at least till you graduate and can be dumped on the street. This design is so-so. There have been some adoptions, mainly because it has good mechanics. But if we’re talking real quality, it just don’t measure up.” The creature flexed its custom battle scars.
“I do other things.”
“Yes, and if you never deliver, you’ll fail with them, too.”
That was a point that occupied a lot of Juan Orozco’s internal worry time. More and more it looked like he was going to end up like his pa—only Juan might never even get a job to be laid off from! “Try your best” was the motto of Fairmont High. But trying your best was only the beginning. Even if you tried your best, you could still be left behind.
These were not things he’d confess to another gamer. He glared back at the slitted yellow eyes, and suddenly it occurred to him that—unlike teachers—this guy was not being paid to be nice. And it was wasting too much time for this to be some humiliating con. It actually wants something from me! Juan sharpened his glare. “And you have some suggestions, O Mighty Virtual Lizard?”
“That…could be. Besides Cret Ret, I have other things going. How would you like to take an affiliate status on a little project?”
Except for local games, no one had ever asked Juan to affiliate on anything. His mouth twisted in bogus contempt. “Affiliate? A percent of a percent of…what? How far down the value chain are you?”
The saurian shrugged and there was the sound of ginkgoes creaking against its shoulders. “My guess is I’m way, way down. That’s how it is with most affiliances. But I can pay real money for each answer I pipe upwards.” The creature named a number; it was enough to ride the freefall every day for a year. A payoff certificate floated in the air between them, showing the named amount and a bonus schedule.
Juan had played his share of finance games. “I get twice that or no deal.” Then he noticed the subrights section. The numbers were not visible. That could be because anyone he recruited would get a lot more.
“Done!” said the Lizard, before Juan could correct his bid upward.
And Juan was sure it was smiling!
“…Okay, what do you want?” And what makes you think a dwit like me can supply it?
“You’re at Fairmont High, aren’t you?”
“You already know that.”
“It’s a strange place, isn’t it?” When Juan did not reply, the critter said. “Trust me, it is strange. Most schools, even charter schools, don’t schedule Adult Education students in with the children.”
“Yeah, the vocational track. The old farts don’t like it. We don’t like it.”
“Well, the task from my upstream affiliate is to snoop around, mainly among these old guys. Make friends with them.”
Yecco. But Juan glanced at the payoff certificate again. It tested valid. The payoff adjudication was more complicated than he wanted to read, but it was backed by Bank of America. “Who in particular?”
“Ah, that’s the problem. Whoever is at the top of my affiliance is coy. We’re just collecting information. Basically, some of these senior citizens used to be big shots.”
“If they were so big, how come they’re in our classes now?” It was just the question the kids asked at school.
“Lots of reasons, Juan. Some of them are just lonely. Some of them are up to their ears in debt, and have to figure how to make a living in the current economy. Some of them aren’t good for much but a healthy body and lots of old memories. They can be very bitter.”
“Unh, how do I make friends with people like that?”
“If you want the money, you figure out a way. Anyway, here are the search criteria.” The Big Lizard shipped him a document. He browsed through the top layer.
“This covers a lot of ground.” Retired San Diego politicians, bioscientists, parents of persons currently in such job categories…
“There are qualifying characteristics in the links. Your job is to interest appropriate people in my affiliance.”
“I…I’m just not that good at talking people up.” Especially people like this.
“Stay poor then. Chicken.”
Juan was silent for a moment. His pa would never take a job like this. Finally, he said, “Okay, I’ll go affiliate with you.”
“I wouldn’t want you doing anything you feel un—”
“I said, I’ll take the job!”
“Okay! Well then, what I’ve given you should get you started. There’s contact info in the document.” The creature lumbered to its feet, and now its voice came from high above. “Just as well we don’t meet again on Pyramid Hill.”
“Suits me.” Juan stood up. He made a point of slapping the creature’s mighty tail as he walked off downhill.
THE TWINS WERE way ahead of him, standing by the soccer field on the other side of campus. As Juan came up the driveway, he grabbed a viewpoint in the bleachers and gave them a ping. Fred waved back, but his shirt was still too gooey for comm. Jerry was looking upward at the UP/Ex shipment falling toward his outstretched hands. Just in time, for sure. The twins were popping the mailer open even as they walked into the shop tent.
Unfortunately, Juan’s first class was at the end of the far wing. He ran across the lawn, keeping his vision tied to unimproved reality: The buildings were mostly three stories today. Their gray walls were like playing cards stacked in a rickety array.
Inside, the choice of view was not entirely his own. Mornings, the school administration required that the Fairmont News show all over the interior walls. Three kids at Hoover High had won IBM career fellowships. Applause, applause, even if Hoover was Fairmont’s unfairly advantaged rival, a charter school run by the Math Ed Department at SDSU. The three young geniuses would have their college education paid for, right through grad school, even if they never worked a day at IBM. Big deal, Juan thought, trying to comfort himself. Someday those kids might be very rich, but a percentage of their professional fortunes would always go back to IBM.
He followed the little green nav arrows with half his attention…and abruptly realized he had climbed two flights of stairs. School admin had rearranged everything since yesterday. Of course, they had updated his nav arrows, too. It was a good thing he hadn’t been paying attention.
He slipped into his classroom and sat down.
MS
. CHUMLIG HAD already started.
Search and Analysis was Chumlig’s main thing. She used to teach a fast-track version of this at Hoover High, but well-documented rumor held that she just couldn’t keep up. So the Department of Education had moved her to the same-named course here at Fairmont. Actually, Juan kind of liked her. She was a failure, too.
“There are many different skills,” she was saying. “Sometimes it’s best to coordinate with lots of other people who together can make the answers.” The students nodded. Be a coordinator. That’s where the biggest and most famous money was. But they also knew where Chumlig was going with this. She looked around the classroom, nodding that she knew they knew. “Alas, you all intend to be top agents, don’t you?”
“It’s what some of us will be.” That was one of the Adult Ed students. Winston Blount was old enough to be Juan’s great-grandfather. When Blount had a bad day he liked to liven things up by harassing Ms. Chumlig.
The Search and Analysis instructor smiled back. “It’s about as likely as being a major league baseball star. The pure ‘coordinating agent’ is a rare type, Dean Blount.”
“Some of us must be the administrators.”
“Oh.” Chumlig looked kind of sad for a moment, like she was figuring out how to pass on bad news. “Administration has changed a lot, Dean Blount.”
Winston Blount sat back in his chair. “Okay. So we have to learn some new tricks.”
“Yes.” Ms. Chumlig looked out over the class. “That’s an important point. This class is about search and analysis, the heart of the economy. We obviously need search and analysis as consumers. In almost all modern jobs, search and analysis are how we make our living. But, in the end, we must also know something about something.”