Rainbows End
Page 18
No! Let the SOB learn sming on his own!
Miri --> Juan, Lena, Xiu:
Juan --> Lena, Miri, Xiu:
Lena --> Juan, Miri, Xiu:
The boy hesitated, “…but it takes a lot of practice to do it smoothly. It can be more trouble than it’s worth when you get caught.” Maybe he was remembering run-ins with his teachers?
Xiang sat forward on the bench. She was leaning on some invisible piece of furniture. “Well, what are some other things?”
“Ah! Lots of stuff. If you override the defaults you can see in any direction you want. You can qualify default requests—like to make a query about something in an overlay. You can blend video from multiple viewpoints so you can ‘be’ where there is no physical viewpoint. That’s called ghosting. If you’re really slick, you can run simulations in real time and use the results as physical advice. That’s how the Radners do so well in baseball. And then there’s the problem of faking results if you hit a network soft spot, or if you want a sender to look more realistic—” The boy rattled on, but now Robert was able enough to record the words; he would have to come back to this.
Lena --> Juan, Miri, Xiu:
Xiu said, “Okay, let’s start with the easiest, Juan.”
“That would be moving attention from face front.” The boy talked them through some simple exercises. Robert had no idea how this looked to Xiu Xiang. After all, she was already remote. For himself, looking directly backwards was easy, especially if he took the view off his own shirt. But Juan didn’t want him to use mirror orientation; he said that would just be confusing once he moved on to other angles.
Without the defaults, things got very tedious. “I’ll spend my whole life just tapping in commands, Juan.”
“Maybe if we use the eye menus,” Xiang said.
Robert gave her an irritated look. “I am, I am!”
Lena --> Xiu:
Xiang’s gaze dropped from his. He looked at Juan. “I never see you tapping your fingers.”
“I’m a kid; I grew up with ensemble coding. Hey, even my mom mostly uses phantom typing.”
“Well, Xiu and I are retreads, Juan. We have learning plasticity and all that. Teach us the command gestures or eyeblinks or whatever.”
“Okay! But this is not like the standard gestures you’ve already learned. For the good stuff, everything is custom between you and your wearable. The skin sensors pick muscle twinges that other people can’t even see. You teach your Epiphany and it teaches you.”
Robert had read about this. It turned out to be just as weird as it sounded, a cross between learning to juggle and teaching some dumb animal to help you juggle! He and Xiu Xiang had about twenty minutes to make fools of themselves before the soccer teams came out to play. But that was long enough that now Robert could look all around himself with just a subtle shrug.
Juan was smiling. “You guys are really good, for—”
“—for oldfolks?” said Xiu.
Juan’s smile broadened. “Yeah.” He looked at Robert. “If you can do this maybe I can learn to put words together…Look, I gotta go help my ma. She’s running a tour this afternoon. See you all tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay,” said Xiang. “I should leave too. How is that most gracefully accomplished?”
“Ha! Most graceful takes practice—but I want it to look cool to anyone watching.” He pointed at the teams rowdying about on the soccer field. “For them, I mean. So how about if I iconify-and-guide you, Dr. Xiang?”
“Very good.”
Xiang’s image collapsed into a ruby point of light.
The boy stood and grinned at Robert. “I think I have the geometry good enough that no one has to cooperate on the receiving side.” His image climbed down the bleachers. His shadow matching was much better than Sharif normally managed. Xiang’s icon tagged along right above his shoulder. He reached the grass and walked away along the edge of the bleachers, his figure shortening in perspective.
And then abruptly, golden letters hung across Robert’s vision.
Xiang --> Gu:
Huh. So that’s what silent messaging looked like. Robert watched the two till they were out of sight.
Lena --> Miri, Xiu:
Miri --> Lena, Xiu:
Robert had no more classes. He could go home now, too. There were plenty of rides available; the cars flocked to the traffic circle when the children were going home. But just now, Robert wasn’t keen on getting back to Fallbrook. He saw that Miri would be arriving home in a few minutes. Bob was on watch duty tonight—whatever that meant. Any run-in with Miri would bring Alice Gu into action. Robert was amazed that he’d ever thought his daughter-in-law was smooth and diplomatic. In a subtle way, she was scary. Or maybe it was simply that Robert realized that if Alice ever became determined, he would be exiled to “Rainbows End.” (He’d never been able to decide if that spelling was the work of an everyday illiterate or someone who really understood the place.)
Okay, so hang around school and watch. There were dynamics here that were unchanged since his childhood, perhaps unchanged since the beginning of human history. He would rebuild his sense of superiority. He climbed to the south corner of the bleachers, far above the kids forming up soccer teams, and even clear of the secretive children who sat at the other end making barely veiled jokes about everyone else.
Miri --> Lena, Xiu:
Lena --> Miri, Xiu:
Xiu --> Lena, Miri:
Xiu --> Lena, Miri:
Lena --> Miri:
Xiu --> Lena:
The sun was lowering behind him, and the shadow of the bleachers extended part way onto the field. He had a naked-eye view of most of the campus. In fact, the buildings looked like junk, the sort of thing you used to buy mail-order if you needed some extra storage in your backyard. But it wasn’t all new junk. The school’s main auditorium was wood, rebuilt here and there with plastic. According to the labels he called up on overlay, it had originally been a pavilion for showing horses!
Xiu --> Lena, Miri:
Focus on the soccer field. That looked like something from Bobby’s school years—if you didn’t mind the fact that there were no line marks or goals. Robert brought up the sports view, and now he could see the usual field layout. The soccer kids moved out onto the field. They wore crash equipment, real helmets, quite unlike what he remembered. The kids’ high-pitched voices wafted direct to him without any magic of modern electronics. They circled around midfield, seemed to be listening to someone.
With a whoop, the teams rushed toward each other, chasing—what? An unseen ball? Robert searched frantically through his options, saw a flickering parade of possible overlays. Aha! Now the teams had spectacular uniforms, and there were umpires. In the bleachers, there was a scattering of adults—teachers? parents?—what you’d expect for a contest that was more a class event than varsity sport.
Xiu --> Lena, Miri:
Miri --> Lena, Xiu:
Xiu --> Lena, Miri:
Lena --> Miri, Xiu:
Xiu --> Lena, Miri:
hink Juan is right about him, Lena. Let me talk to him. You’d still be covered.
Xiu --> Lena:
Robert still couldn’t see the soccer ball. Instead, the field was now covered by a golden fog. In places it came almost to the players’ waists. Tiny numbers floated within the mist, changing with the thickness and brightness of the glow. When the players of opposing teams rushed into close contact, the glow flared brightly, and the children would angle around each other as if trying to line up a kick. And then the light would erupt like an arc of wildfire across the field.
Xiu --> Lena, Miri:
Miri --> Lena, Xiu:
Xiu --> Lena, Miri:
Miri --> Lena, Xiu:
Lena --> Miri, Xiu:
One child broke away from the others and raced along the golden fire, somehow guessing just where and when it would flare up. The girl gave an odd, flailing kick—and landed on her rear. For an instant there was a light in the nearest goal, so sharp and intense it was as if all the fog had suddenly coalesced into the fuzzy image of a soccer ball. Everybody was shouting, even the phantom adults in the bleachers.
Robert made a grumpy noise. Even something as simple as a schoolyard game didn’t make sense. He pulled at his cuff, trying to get a clearer view.
“It’s not your fault, my man. You’re seeing properly.” The voice seemed to be coming from right beside him. Robert glanced over, but there was no body to keep the voice company. He stared into the empty space, and after a moment, the voice continued. “Just look at the scoreboard. Everything is fuzzy about this game, even the score.” On the big scoreboard facing the bleachers, the goal was recorded as 0.97. “I do think that should be rounded to one. That was an excellent, near-certain goal the girl kicked.” On the field, the teams had retreated to their sides. Another phantom kickoff was in progress.
Robert kept his eyes on the action below. He didn’t reply to the helpful voice. “You don’t recognize the game, do you, Professor? It’s Egan soccer. See—” A reference floated across his vision, everything anyone could want to know about Egan soccer. Out on the field, three kids had fallen over, and two had collided. “Of course,” the voice continued, “it’s really just an approximation to the ideal.”
“I’ll bet,” said Robert, and he almost smiled. The stranger’s tone was confiding, the speech affected—and almost every sentence was a mild putdown. It was a pleasure to run into a type he understood so well. He turned and looked into the empty space. “Run along, kid. You’re a long way from being able to play head games with me.”
“I don’t play games, my man.” The reply started out angry, segued back to patronizing good humor. “You are an interesting case, Robert Gu. I’m used to manipulating people, but usually through intermediaries. I’m much too busy to chat with bottom dwellers directly. But you intrigue me.”
Robert pretended to watch the game, but the voice continued, “I know what’s eating you up inside. I know how much it bothers you that you can’t make poetry anymore.”
Robert couldn’t suppress a start of surprise. The invisible stranger gave a little chuckle; somehow he had distinguished the movement from Robert’s natural twitchiness. “No need to be coy. You can’t disguise your reactions here. The medical sensing on school grounds is so good that you might as well be hooked up to a lie detector.”
I should just walk away. Instead he watched the “soccer” match for a few moments. When he was sure he had proper control of his voice, he said, “You are admitting to a crime, then.”
Another chuckle. “Of sorts, though it’s the crime of superior network skills. You can think of me as something of a higher being, empowered by all the tools with which mortal men have chosen to smarten the landscape.”
This must be a kid. Or maybe not. Maybe the visitor was invisible because even his virtual presence on school grounds was a violation of law. Robert shrugged, “I’d be happy to report your ‘superior network skills’ to interested parties.”
“You won’t do that. Primus, because the police could never identify me. Secundus, because I can return to you what you have lost. I can give you back your poetical voice.”
This time, Robert was in control and managed a creditable chuckle of his own.
“Ah,” said the other, “such suspicion. But also the beginning of belief! You should read the news, or just loosen up your ad filters. In olden times, you had athletes on steroids and students on amphetamines. Those drugs were largely false promises. Nowadays, we have things that really work.”
A drug dealer, by God! Robert almost laughed for real. But then he considered himself, his smooth skin, his ability to run and jump and scarcely feel out of breath. What’s already happened would be magic by the standards of my past life. Yes, this might be a drug dealer, but so what? “Where’s the profit in drugs for recovering world-class poesy?” Robert spoke the words with proper flippancy, then realized how much he was revealing. Maybe that didn’t matter.
“You are so old-fashioned, Professor.” The stranger paused. “See those hills to the south of you?” Hills covered with endless housing. “A few miles beyond them is one of the few places on Earth where physical location is still important.”
“UCSD?”
“Close. I mean the biotech labs that surround the campus. What goes on in those labs is nothing like twentieth-century medical research. Modern cures are awesome things, but often they are unique to the individual patient.”
“You can’t finance research that way.”
“Don’t get me wrong. Broad-spectrum cures are still the big money-makers. But even those use custom analysis to guard against side effects. Yes, you are a singleton case. The Alzheimer cures are sometimes incomplete, but the failures are idiosyncratic. There is no other great poet who’s had your problem. As of today, there is no cure.” This clown knew how to mix the brutal putdowns with flattery. “But we live in an age of enhancement drugs, Professor, and many of them are singleton hits. There is a chance, a very good chance, that the labs can be caused to find you a cure.”
Magic. But what if he can do it? This is The Future. And I am alive again, and maybe—Robert felt the hope growing within him. He couldn’t help it. This SOB has me. I know it’s manipulation, but that doesn’t matter.
“So who am I dealing with, O Mysterious Stranger?” It was a losing question, but it just slipped out.
“Mysterious Stranger? Um—” There was a pause, no doubt as this paraliterate looked up the reference. “Why yes, you got my name on the very first try! Mysterious Stranger. That is good.”
Robert gritted his teeth. “And I take it that getting your help involves something dangerous or illegal.”
“Definitely illegal, Professor. And somewhat dangerous—for you, that is. Whatever might cure you would be pushing into unknown medical territory. But at the same time, very much worth it, don’t you think?”
Yes! “Maybe.” Robert kept the tension out of his voice, and glanced mildly at the empty space beside him. “What’s the price? What do you want from me?”
The stranger laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. I simply want cooperation with a project you’re already involved in. Keep seeing your pals at the UCSD library. Go along with their plans.”
“And keep you up-to-date on them?”
“Ah, no need for that, my man. I am an all-encompassing cloud of knowingness. No, what I need is your hands. Think of yourself as a droid who was once a poet. So, Professor, do we have a deal?”
“I’ll think about
it.”
“Once you do, I’m sure you’ll sign.”
“In blood, I suppose?”
“Oh, you’re so old-fashioned, Professor. No blood. Not yet.”
LIEUTENANT COLONEL ROBERT Gu, Jr., had brought work home from the office. That’s how he thought of it anyway, when he worked in the time that both he and Alice thought should be theirs and Miri’s. But Miri had her own studying to do tonight, and Alice…well, her latest assignment was the worst yet. She wandered about, stony-faced and terse. Anyone else in her position would be dead by now, or a raving lunatic. Somehow she hung on, often simulating something like her natural self, and successfully managing the prep for her latest assignment. That’s why the Corps keeps driving her harder and harder.
Bob pushed the thought away. There was a reason for such sacrifice. Chicago was more than a decade past. There hadn’t been a successful nuclear attack on the U.S. or any of the treaty organization countries in more than five years. But the threat was always there. He still had nightmares about the launchers at that orphanage in Asunción, and what he had almost done to shut them down. And as always, the web oozed with rumors of new technologies that would make the classical weapons obsolete. Despite ubiquitous security, despite the efforts of America, China, and the Indo-Europeans, the risks kept growing. There would still be places that would come to glow in the dark.
Bob sifted through the latest threat assessments. Something was in the wind, and it might be closer than Paraguay. The really bad news was two paragraphs further on: An analyst pool at CIA thought the Indo-Europeans might be somehow collaborating with bad guys. Christ! If the Great Powers can’t stand together, how can humanity make it through this century?
There was motion behind him. It was his father, standing in the doorway.
“Dad,” he acknowledged politely.
His old man stared for a second. Bob made the general form of his paperwork visible.
“Oops. Sorry, Son. You’re working?” He squinted at Bob’s desk.
“Yeah, some stuff from the office. Don’t worry if it looks blurry; it’s not on the house menu.”