by Rob Hart
“Is what always like what?” he asked, not looking at her.
“The peep show,” she said. “Waiting on line for twenty minutes just to get out.”
He shrugged. Like, It is what it is.
“Do we get paid for that time?”
He laughed, finally looked at her. The band of his watch was rubber, bright orange.
“First day?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Welcome to Cloud,” he said as the tram slid into the station. He pushed through to get a spot on board and she followed, not standing near him, because he was a sarcastic little asshole and she didn’t want to talk to him anymore. She studied the faces of the people around her. Everyone looked dead on their feet. People were holding themselves up, or people who seemed to be friendly were holding each other up, and as the tram engaged, sliding down the track, a few stumbled from the sudden movement.
Every second Zinnia spent in the stink of this place made her want to finish the job. That’s what it felt like—a smell, seeping into her skin. The thick odor of neglected cattle in a pen, and already her feet felt as if they were being sucked into the accumulated piles of shit on the ground.
So of course the tram came to a halt between lines, and a collective groan went up from the crowd. There was a chime, and a male, robotic voice said: “For your safety, there is debris on the tracks that must be removed. The tram will resume momentarily.”
The way everyone reacted—annoyed but resigned to their fate—it was like this was a regular occurrence. The woman next to Zinnia looked friendly enough. Blond hair, cute glasses, lots of tattoos. Zinnia asked, “What’s that about?”
“Happens a few times a week,” the woman said. “It’ll be clear in a minute. Don’t want to crash, do we?”
Not very friendly, then. But Zinnia remembered a story she’d stumbled on in her research: Ten years ago there’d been a derailment at a MotherCloud because of some ceiling tiles that’d fallen on the tracks. Two people died. The trams were maglev, which meant the car didn’t actually touch the rails. It hovered a few millimeters above, which improved speed and cut down on wear and tear. Apparently that left them susceptible to derailment.
A few minutes later they were under way again and she got off at her stop, took the elevator up, stepped into her apartment. Flicked the light. A box sat on the counter. She froze. First, because she’d forgotten, briefly, she had ordered some stuff, and second, because she would have expected the box to be outside the door, or available somewhere else for pickup, not sitting on her kitchen counter, because that meant someone had been inside her apartment.
She swept the place, which didn’t take long. She ran her hands over places she couldn’t see. Looked into the cupboards and closet, just to make sure nothing else had been left behind. Then she checked her bag. Her makeup kit was intact, and her laptop hadn’t been opened, because if it had been opened by anyone but her, the guts would have fried themselves when they registered the wrong fingerprints.
When she was done, she sat on the bed and peeled off her boots. The backs of her feet were raw, bleeding, white layers of dead skin bunched up toward her heels. A few of her toes were scratched at the joints. Taking the boots off, and then exposing the wounds to the air, made them come alive and throb.
She found a thin roll of paper towels in a cupboard. Wet a handful in the sink and washed her feet, the towels coming back pink. She took a first-aid kit out of her bag, applied antibiotic cream to where the skin had been rubbed raw, and placed bandages around her feet.
When she was finished, she inspected her work, found it satisfactory, and unpacked the box, putting everything aside but the sneakers. Pulled on some socks and tried them on for size. Needed a little breaking in, which meant she was looking forward to a week of cracked and beaten feet, but at least they were better than the boots.
She walked down to the lobby, through the promenade to Live-Play, figuring she’d get something to eat. As she walked she made note of the CloudPoints. Their locations, how visible they were. They were mostly embedded into walls, but they all had access panels on the bottom, which took a single specialized, rounded key to open. Unlikely she’d get a copy of the key, but it was the kind of lock she could get past in seconds with the plastic tube of a pen carved into the right shape.
Easy enough.
The real problem was planting the gopher.
Whichever CloudPoint she picked, there’d be a record of her being there thanks to the watch. Which meant she had to plant it while she wasn’t wearing her CloudBand.
She figured on good old-fashioned social engineering to get around. She couldn’t get on and off the tram without swiping, but as for the elevator, politeness prevailed. When the elevator was crowded and already headed to the first floor, no one swiped.
She just had to get out of her room without the watch.
For that, she needed one more item. She wandered in and out of shops until she found a store with a little display of multi-tools by the register. They looked sturdy enough to do the job.
What she didn’t like was the man lurking behind the counter. A toad in a green shirt who gave her the You’re not white so I think you’ll steal shit look. She briefly considered just buying the multi-tool, but she imagined anything she paid for was being logged and tracked. Somewhere, dug into the computer brain at Cloud, was a list of all the stuff she’d bought.
She was alive because she was cautious.
Sometimes caution meant taking the long way around.
Plus, she didn’t like the look on the man’s face.
So she circled the store as if she were browsing, keeping an eye out for cameras, and finding none, she went to a large display of candy and protein bars in the rear. She glanced back at the man, looking at him in her peripheral vision, and he wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that he was staring.
She rooted through the candies, like she were trying to choose, her hand snaking through so she could loosen the bolt on a shelf with her fingertips, just until it was about to go, and then she pulled off a package of sour gummies and brought it to the counter and said, “The shelf over there seems a little loose. Fourth down from the top.”
He didn’t budge. Eyed the payment disc. She placed the gummies down next to it and swiped. The payment registered and he nodded, impressed, as if she’d proven him wrong about the whole of colored society. She gave him a Fuck you smile and he wandered over to the shelf. As soon as he put his hand on it, it crashed to the floor, and the moment it did Zinnia lifted a multi-tool and put it in her back pocket.
He turned to look at her, wanting to blame her even though he wasn’t really sure how, and Zinnia just shrugged and said, “Told you.”
Having worked up an appetite between a long stretch on the warehouse floor and making that asshole’s day worse, she headed to Live-Play and surveyed the various floors and the shiny glowing signs. CloudBurger caught her eye. The draw of cheap beef was strong. Her legs felt like jelly and she could use the protein.
The inside of the restaurant was clean and crowded. White subway tile with red accents, tables that were metal but made to look like wood. She sat at a free table in the back, where she found a tablet inviting her to place her order. She settled on a double CloudBurger with cheese, large fries, a bottle of water. Once the order was confirmed she swiped her watch to pay, and the screen told her it would arrive within seven minutes.
While she waited she fiddled with the watch. Swiping up, down, left, and right through the various screens. Found a screen for health data. She’d walked sixteen thousand steps, or the equivalent of eight miles. It made her wish she’d ordered a milkshake with her meal.
A few minutes later—less than seven—a round Latina woman in a green polo placed a tray in front of her. Zinnia smiled and nodded. The woman didn’t acknowledge her, just
turned back to the kitchen.
Zinnia picked up the burger, wrapped in a wax-paper sleeve. It was hot. Almost too hot, but she was starving. She took a bite and went cross-eyed. It’d been a long time since she ate beef—it just wasn’t worth the expense—but more than that, it was cooked well. Griddled, deep brown, crisp, the cheese melted into the cratered surface. There was a pinkish sauce on it, too, giving it a little vinegary kick that cut through the richness of all the fat. Before she was halfway done she clicked through the tablet, ordered another, as well as a milkshake. Eight miles.
“Zinnia?”
She looked up, mouth crammed with food.
The goof from the bus.
Peter? Pablo?
“Paxton,” he said, pressing his hand to his blue polo shirt. “Mind if I join you? There don’t seem to be any free seats.”
She chewed. Swallowed. Thought.
No, she wanted to be alone.
But that shirt. A beautiful shade of blue. That could be useful.
“Sure,” she said, nodding to the empty seat across from her.
He smiled, pulled the tablet toward him, and clicked through the screen, selecting what he wanted. He raised his watch, but before swiping it he nodded at the burger. “How is it?”
“Really good.”
He nodded, swiped, and sat back.
“So, you made red,” he said.
“I did.”
“How is it?”
“My feet are bleeding.”
He grimaced. She shoved some fries in her mouth.
“You must be happy,” she said. “Former prison guard. This must be a cakewalk. Probably less likely you’ll get shanked in a place like this.”
“I wanted your job. I left the prison for a reason. I wasn’t in love with it.”
She laughed. “You’re in love with picking items off shelves?”
“No, just…this is a temporary stop for me.”
“Well, cheers to that,” she said, raising her bottle of water, taking a sip.
The woman in green showed up again, hoisting two trays. She placed down Zinnia’s, then gave Paxton his. It held two burgers, two fries, and a shake. He hoisted his burger, took a bite. Eyes went wide. He swallowed most of what was in his mouth and said, “Jesus.”
“I know, right?”
“Last time I had beef I was celebrating,” he said. “Out at a restaurant. Got a steak. Cost an arm and a leg.”
“Well, that’s what happens when you own the cattle farms and you can cut out the middleman,” she said. “There are some perks to working here, I guess.”
He nodded. “Right. Perks.”
There was a pause in the conversation, so Zinnia filled it with food. Paxton followed. The two of them ate, not looking at each other, but looking around the restaurant. Zinnia ran it through her head. Security guards probably had unlimited access. And she could social-engineer the shit out of him; he was straight and had a penis.
So when Paxton finished his food and wiped his mouth with a napkin, and looked at Zinnia and said, “I don’t want to be too forward, but, I don’t know anyone here, and I was wondering if you’d be interested in grabbing a drink,” Zinnia said, “Sure.”
GIBSON
The thing about getting toward the end is, you start thinking about legacy. That’s a big word.
Legacy.
It means that people will still be thinking about you after you’re dead and gone, which is a pretty nice thing, isn’t it? I think we all want that.
It’s a funny thing, too, in that you don’t have any control over it. You can try your best to build a narrative. A story of who you are and what you did. But history decides in the end. Doesn’t matter what I write here. It’ll be part of a record, but it might not be the deciding factor on how people see me.
I want people to see me well. No one wants to be a villain. Look at poor old Christopher Columbus. The man found America, but then a couple of folks decided they didn’t like how he found America. People say he and his crew brought all these diseases that devastated native populations. How was he to know that? He didn’t launch knowing the folks in the New World wouldn’t be able to handle stuff like smallpox and measles.
It’s a damn sorry thing. It’s never nice when people die, especially getting sick like that. But he didn’t do it on purpose, and I think that ought to be taken into account. And there’s all this other stuff said about Columbus, about what he did to who, but we ought to focus on the endpoint.
He found America. Not that it was lost! But he changed the face of the world.
Sometimes that means making tough decisions and some people just don’t get that. Which is why we got to a point a few years ago when people were tearing down every statue of Columbus they could find. Which capped off with that big demonstration in Columbus, Ohio, and I don’t need to tell you how that ended. I think we’re all still haunted by the pictures.
Imagine what that would be like, if we could pluck Columbus off the deck of his ship in 1492, just as he saw land. That promise of a new beginning. And then we whisk him here and we tell him what his legacy will be. That he’ll become a villain. Would he keep sailing? Or would he turn back around?
I don’t know. And Cloud hasn’t cracked time travel yet (though, and I’m being serious here, I had a division looking into this for a couple of years, because why the hell not?). So it ain’t gonna happen, and certainly not within the last few months of my life.
Still, it makes me think of my own legacy.
There are two things I’m damn proud of.
I talked a bit about how Cloud created a model aimed at fixing the environment by reducing greenhouse gases, and how a big part of that was cutting down commutes. But that didn’t happen in a vacuum. We didn’t just build a MotherCloud and say, “Here we go. Now things are different.”
The first thing we had to do was rethink the model of how we built things. I know America is supposed to be a country founded on capitalism, but it’s sort of incredible how damn hard this country used to make it for businesses to thrive. It’s why so many American companies went overseas. If you put up wall after wall in front of me, why would I build here? Why not just go someplace where there were no walls?
Think of an apartment building. Say it’s got six floors. A lot of people want to live in this apartment building because it’s pretty nice. But more and more people want to move there, and the man who owns the building thinks: why not build another floor or two? So he does, and that’s okay. Growth is a good thing. He makes a little more money, he can provide better for his family.
But let’s say the city is getting crowded. Say more people are moving there, and it’s not just that he wants to build more, he has to build more to meet demand. This goes beyond wanting to make money. He has property. That property is valuable. I’d say he has a responsibility to the city as a whole. A city can’t grow without people. So he adds another floor or two. But the foundation is only so stable. You’ve got to deal with the existing infrastructure.
The bigger the building gets, the less stable it becomes.
Build on it too much, it topples to the ground.
And that’s because you’re trying to graft new needs onto an existing model.
The smarter thing to do would be to tear down the damn building! Start from scratch! Look at the needs you have now, really think about your future needs, and build from there. Put up a thirty-story building. And make the foundation strong enough you can build on more if you need to.
Think about all those cities that got unlivable because the roads were built to support a hundred thousand people, but then they swelled up to more than a million. How sewer systems corrode and collapse because suddenly you’ve got triple the amount of people flushing their waste away.
Point is, sometimes you’ve got to reth
ink how you do things, rather than try to build on unsteady ground. It’s why I lobbied so hard for laws that would help businesses grow, rather than hinder them. For example, the Red Tape Elimination Act. Used to be it took years to build a structure and open it as a business. You had to do all these studies and cross off all these boxes, and most of them were pointless. For example, in one state, I think it was Delaware? You had to do an environmental impact study for one agency, which cost a whole bunch of money and took something like six months. And there was another agency that wanted an EIS, but you couldn’t use the same one for both agencies. You had to do two of the exact same thing—and eat the cost. It was basically just a way to keep people in the government employed.
And God forbid you tried to build it and didn’t hire a union. They’d set up a big inflatable rat in front of your building and scream at everyone who tried to walk through the door. Except if you did try to hire them, you’d pay quadruple the going rate, plus the work wouldn’t be as good. People don’t commit when they’ve got job security. People earning their wages, they work harder. This is why I championed the Freedom from Harassment in Construction Act. Now you don’t see those inflatable rats anymore. Someone puts them up, cops can pull them right down, put them in the trash where they belong.
Or the Paperless Currency Act, which pushed the government to make near-field communication more secure and widespread, so we could stop printing and exchanging so much money.
The most important, by far, was the Freedom from Machinery Act, which mandated hiring quotas, as well as the maximum number of jobs any given business can field out to robots. This was the most controversial thing I ever did, more so than the employee rating systems, because a lot of other business owners got real mad at me for doing it. The reality is, a lot of the things at Cloud could be done cheaper if we had robots doing them. I might be worth another billion or two. But, damn it, I want to see people working! I want to walk across a warehouse floor and see men and women able to support themselves.