Eastern Standard Tribe

by Cory Doctorow

an offshore casino that the Tribe used to launder itsmoney.

  Now V/DT was striking back, angling for a government contract in Massachusetts,a fat bit of pork for managing payments to rightsholders whose media wasassessed at the MassPike's tollbooths. Rights-societies were a fabulousopportunity to skim and launder and spindle money in plenty, and Virgin'smassive repertoire combined with Deutsche Telekom's Teutonic attention to detailwas a tough combination to beat. Needless to say, the Route 128-based Tribalistswho had the existing contract needed an edge, and would pay handsomely for it.

  London nights seemed like a step up from San Francisco mornings to Art --instead of getting up at 4AM to get NYC, he could sleep in and chat them upthrough the night. The Euro sensibility, with its many nap-breaks, statutoryholidays and extended vacations seemed ideally suited to a double agent's life.

  But Art hadn't counted on the Tribalists' hands-on approach to his work. Theyobsessively grepped his daily feed of spreadsheets, whiteboard-output, memos andconversation reports for any of ten thousand hot keywords, querying him fordeeper detail on trivial, half-remembered bullshit sessions with the V/DT's userexperience engineers. His comm buzzed and blipped at all hours, and his payoffwas dependent on his prompt response. They were running him ragged.

  Four hours in the police station gave Art ample opportunity to catch up on thebacklog of finicky queries. Since the accident, he'd been distracted and tardy,and had begun to invent his responses, since it all seemed so trivial to himanyway.

  Fede had sent him about a thousand nagging notes reminding him to generate a newkey and phone with the fingerprint. Christ. Fede had been with McKinsey for mostof his adult life, and he was superparanoid about being exposed and disgraced intheir ranks. Art's experience with the other McKinsey people around the officesuggested that the notion of any of those overpaid buzzword-slingers sniffingtheir traffic was about as likely as a lightning strike. Heaving a dramatic sighfor his own benefit, he began the lengthy process of generating enoughrandomness to seed the key, mashing the keyboard, whispering nonsense syllables,and pointing the comm's camera lens at arbitrary corners of the police station.After ten minutes of crypto-Tourette's, the comm announced that he'd beensufficiently random and prompted him for a passphrase. Jesus. What a pain in theass. He struggled to recall all the words to the theme song from a CBC sitcomhe'd watched as a kid, and then his comm went into a full-on churn as itlaboriously re-ciphered all of his stored files with the new key, leaving Art tologin while he waited.

  Trepan: Afternoon!

  Colonelonic: Hey, Trepan. How's it going?

  Trepan: Foul. I'm stuck at a copshop in London with my thumb up my ass. I gotmugged.

  Colonelonic: Yikes! You OK?

  Ballgravy: Shit!

  Trepan: Oh, I'm fine -- just bored. They didn't hurt me. I commed 999 while theywere running their game and showed it to them when they got ready to do thedeed, so they took off.

  ##Colonelonic laughs

  Ballgravy: Britain==ass. Lon-dong.

  Colonelonic: Sweet!

  Trepan: Thanks. Now if the cops would only finish the paperwork...

  Colonelonic: What are you doing in London, anyway?

  Ballgravy: Ass ass ass

  Colonelonic: Shut up, Bgravy

  Ballgravy: Blow me

  Trepan: What's wrong with you, Ballgravy? We're having a grown-up conversationhere

  Ballgravy: Just don't like Brits.

  Trepan: What, all of them?

  Ballgravy: Whatever -- all the ones I've met have been tight-ass pricks

  ##Colonelonic: (private) He's just a troll, ignore him

  private Colonelonic: Watch this

  Trepan: How many?

  Ballgravy: How many what?

  Trepan: Have you met?

  Ballgravy: Enough

  Trepan: > 100?

  Ballgravy: No

  Trepan: > 50?

  Ballgravy: No

  Trepan: > 10?

  Ballgravy: Around 10

  Trepan: Where are you from?

  Ballgravy: Queens

  Trepan: Well, you're not going to believe this, but you're the tenth person fromQueens I've met -- and you're all morons who pick fights with strangers inchat-rooms

  Colonelonic: Queens==ass

  Trepan: Ass ass ass

  Ballgravy: Fuck you both

  ##Ballgravy has left channel #EST.chatter

  Colonelonic: Nicely done

  Colonelonic: He's been boring me stupid for the past hour, following me fromchannel to channel

  Colonelonic: What are you doing in London, anyway?

  Trepan: Like I said, waiting for the cops

  Colonelonic: But why are you there in the first place

  Trepan: /private Colonelonic It's a work thing. For EST.

  ##Colonelonic: (private) No shit?

  Trepan: /private Colonelonic Yeah. Can't really say much more, you understand

  ##Colonelonic: (private) Cool! Any more jobs? One more day at Merril-Lynch andI'm gonna kill someone

  Trepan: /private Colonelonic Sorry, no. There must be some perks though.

  ##Colonelonic: (private) I can pick fights with strangers in chat rooms! Also, Iget to play with Lexus-Nexus all I want

  Trepan: /private Colonelonic That's pretty rad, anyway

  ##Ballgravy has joined channel #EST.chatter

  Ballgravy: Homos

  Trepan: Oh Christ, are you back again, Queens?

  Colonelonic: I've gotta go anyway

  Trepan: See ya

  ##Colonelonic has left channel #EST.chatter

  ##Trepan has left channel #EST.chatter

  Art stood up and blinked. He approached the desk sergeant and asked if hethought it would be much longer. The sergeant fiddled with a comm for a moment,then said, "Oh, we're quite done with you sir, thank you." Art repressed avituperative response, counted three, then thanked the cop.

  He commed Linda.

  "What's up?"

  "They say we're free to go. I think they've been just keeping us here for shitsand giggles. Can you believe that?"

  "Whatever -- I've been having a nice chat with Constable McGivens. Constable, isit all right if we go now?"

  There was some distant, English rumbling, then Linda giggled. "All right, then.Thank you so much, officer!

  "Art? I'll meet you at the front doors, all right?"

  "That's great," Art said. He stretched. His ass was numb, his head throbbed, andhe wanted to strangle Linda.

  She emerged into the dawn blinking and grinning, and surprised him with a long,full-body hug. "Sorry I was so snappish before," she said. "I was just scared.The cops say that you were quite brave. Thank you."

  Art's adrenals dry-fired as he tried to work up a good angry head of steam, thenhe gave up. "It's all right."

  "Let's go get some breakfast, OK?"

  10.

  The parking-lot is aswarm with people, fire engines and ambulances. There's asiren going off somewhere down in the bowels of the sanatorium, and still Ican't get anyone to look up at the goddamned roof.

  I've tried hollering myself hoarse into the updrafts from the cheery blaze, butthe wind's against me, my shouts rising up past my ears. I've tried droppingmore pebbles, but the winds whip them away, and I've learned my lesson abouthalf-bricks.

  Weirdly, I'm not worried about getting into trouble. I've already beeninvoluntarily committed by the Tribe's enemies, the massed and devious forces ofthe Pacific Daylight Tribe and the Greenwich Mean Tribe. I am officially NotResponsible. Confused and Prone to Wandering. Coo-Coo for Coco-Puffs. It's notlike I hurt anyone, just decremented the number of roadworthy fartmobiles byone.

  I got up this morning at four, awakened by the tiniest sound from the wardcorridors, a wheel from a pharmaceuticals tray maybe. Three weeks on medicallyprescribed sleepytime drugs have barely scratched the surface of the damagewrought by years of circadian abuse. I'd been having a fragile shadow of adream, the ghost of a REM cycle, and it was the old dream, the dream of
thedoctor's office and the older kids who could manage the trick of making apicture into reality.

  I went from that state to total wakefulness in an instant, and knew to acertainty that I wouldn't be sleeping again any time soon. I paced my smallroom, smelled the cheerful flowers my cousins brought last week when theyvisited from Toronto, watched the horizon for signs of a breaking dawn. I wishedfutilely for my comm and a nice private channel where I could sling somebullshit and have some slung in my direction, just connect with another humanbeing at a nice, safe remove.

  They chide me for arguing on the ward, call it belligerence and try to sidetrackme with questions about my motivations, a tactic rating barely above ad hominemsin my book. No one to talk to -- the other patients get violent or nod off,depending on their medication levels, and the staff just patronize me.

  Four AM and I'm going nuts, hamsters in my mind spinning their wheels at athousand RPM, chittering away. I snort -- if I wasn't crazy to begin with,