by Stan Lee
LOL, no, that’s just how his face looks.
LOL, okay.
What about the petition? Did you . . .
No! I thought you did!
And then, the first time since they met, neither Cameron nor Nia knows what to say. They sit together, physically separate but utterly connected by the moment they’ve created, gazing at the hole in the internet where Daggett Smith used to be. They did that. They made that. His followers, confused and embarrassed, have disbanded. The man himself has vanished from public life. And everyone, from television’s talking heads to random commenters on stories about Smith’s strange downfall, has noted that life online seems just a little sweeter, a little less toxic, without Daggett Smith and his fetid followers crawling out of the woodwork to comment on the issues of the day.
Cameron had set out to give Daggett Smith the comeuppance he deserved—to dole out a little cosmic justice to the man whose poisonous ideas found their real-world expression in his classmate’s fists. But in the end, he and Nia didn’t just take down one noxious person, and that was the most curious and exciting part of all. Behind Daggett Smith was something bigger: not just his fans, who had scattered like cockroaches in the wake of Smith’s humiliating performance, but a structure. A web of dummy sites, bots, aggregators: all devoted to amplifying Smith’s message, and all fallen abruptly silent in the wake of his banishment. Cameron wondered who’d constructed the network—it was far too sophisticated to be Smith himself—but more than that, he marveled at the butterfly effect of quieting one angry voice. And it wasn’t even that hard. If they could accomplish something like this so easily, what could they do if they really tried?
Sooooo. What should our next project be?
11
The Watcher
The rising sun bathes the world in orange light, but inside the glass house set high in the lakeside bluffs, all is shadowed and silent. In the bedroom, the woman sleeping naked between soft, stark white sheets breathes slowly, in and out, her eyes flicking soundlessly beneath their lids. The house is waiting for a signal, buried deep in the skin of its occupant.
The minutes tick by. The woman stirs. The light in the room shifts imperceptibly as in the next room, a soft click is followed by a slow trickle of water, the smell of coffee brewing. The floor warms in anticipation of her bare feet touching it as the windows brighten, revealing a vast expanse of the ocean at one end, the gleaming city at the other. The woman’s eyes open as the light touches her left temple, where a loose spiral of ten light-colored dots could be mistaken for a smattering of freckles.
She taps her finger to the pattern, and one of the windows illuminates, replacing its view of the ocean with a data scroll. The voice that accompanies it is a deep baritone.
“Good morning, Olivia.”
Olivia Park sits up and blinks, trying to clear the cobwebs from her head. She slept strangely last night, something a glance at the display on the window confirms. Four hours spent in REM cycle—four hours of troubled dreams she can remember only fragments of. The grogginess, though . . . She reaches with her intact hand for the tablet next to her bed, swiping and tapping, frowning in annoyance. The implants have worked so well for so long; it’s been ages since she woke up feeling anything but utterly refreshed. If her blood sugar is low, if her macros are off, if she’s not getting enough sleep, the software under her skin knows before she ever feels it; all she has to do is read the data and respond.
The voice interrupts her thoughts.
“Your coffee is ready.”
“Shut up,” she says, and the voice complies.
If her mother were still alive, Olivia would have been scolded for being rude to the man—never mind that he isn’t a man at all, but a household computer program who doesn’t have any sensibilities to offend. But that had been Mum’s thing; the woman was a tithing member in the Church of Robots Are People Too. Years ago, the butler bot had a name—Felix—and a holographic avatar, a generically handsome middle-aged man in a tuxedo, which Olivia thought was ridiculous. When she inherited the house, she’d stripped Felix down to his digital studs; instead of looking like a character out of a drawing room comedy, he was now a bare-bones silhouette, vaguely humanoid but without distinguishing features, and he sure as hell wasn’t wearing clothes. To her, it’s an object, a holo-man—or Hollow Man, like in that old horror movie about a guy who turns himself invisible. Olivia doesn’t find many things funny, but the pun sometimes makes her chuckle.
Her mother would have probably hated what she’d done to Felix, would see it as akin to lobotomizing a human being . . . or on the other hand, maybe not. She and Dad had both plunged to their deaths on a family road trip through the mountains, the same accident that left their daughter an orphan with only six and a half fingers in total—all thanks to a malfunction in the prototype self-driving car that Mum liked to call Herbie. If Olivia hadn’t already distrusted AI before that, she certainly would have after.
* * *
In the kitchen, she sips her coffee and registers the gentle hum in her chest as she turns to take in the view. This was her first modification; she chose it the way most kids choose their first tattoo. A magnet hidden beneath the skin of her sternum, it vibrates whenever she faces true north. A built-in compass. That’s what it meant to her, back then: I’ve found my direction.
She’s never looked back. Running her father’s company is a duty, an occupation. But gaining control over her own biology, piece by piece, is what drives her. There’s nothing about her body she doesn’t know. The implants monitor her body fat percentage, her bloodwork, her VO2 levels, her hormones; she hasn’t had a breakout in years, she sleeps like a baby. Her IQ, already far above average, has risen by ten percent since she began tinkering.
* * *
She designs her own implants now, though she doesn’t do the wet work herself. For that, she has the discreet surgeon whom she pays in cash. A holdover from her father’s days, one of the few she kept on. He doesn’t leave scars, and he doesn’t ask questions. He seems to like her, too—perhaps for the same reason. She likes him better than she likes most people. Any people, really. It’s the unforeseen consequence of self-improvement: the more advanced Olivia becomes, the less patience she has for everyone who can’t catch up, who can’t evolve. Someday, someone will hack the human body and increase our lifespan by twenty, fifty, even a hundred percent. But Olivia is past that; she’s thinking two steps ahead. Right now, her body is a temple. But eventually, it will be a cage—and she needs to find the key. To take that step forward—to slip through the bars and step like Alice through the looking glass, into a new world. Permeating the barrier that separates humanity from technology. She always thought she would be the first.
Which makes it especially curious, and infuriating, that someone else seems to have gotten there ahead of her. Destroying her asset, disrupting her network, sniffing around where he doesn’t belong—and all with an uncanny elegance that suggests the presence of a very rare, very dangerous talent.
“You have one new message,” says the Hollow Man. “Priority marked.”
“Show me.”
One of the windows that looks out on the bay turns opaque, then glows, illuminating an inbox with one unread message. She feels a peculiar sensation as she opens it, and realizes: her skin has erupted with goose bumps.
Target identified. Initiate level one surveillance on ACKERSON, CAMERON?
Olivia scowls—not with confusion, but at the unwelcome confirmation of what she already suspected. Of course it’s him. She’s always dreaded her eventual reacquaintance with the Ackerson kid. Now it’s not just inevitable, but imminent.
“History repeats,” she mutters.
“Beg pardon,” says the Hollow Man. “I didn’t understand.”
Olivia sighs.
“Nothing,” she says. “Send reply.” She pauses, and smiles. “Surveillance, level two. I want to know what that little bastard is up to.”
12
Crush<
br />
As his high school graduation approaches, Cameron finds himself thinking about Nia constantly—and struggling to understand how someone he feels so close to every time they’re online could be so hard to pin down in person. In cyberspace, their relationship is blossoming: Nia is eager, flirtatious, and full of ideas about whom they should target next in their Operation Cosmic Justice, which they’re planning to put into phase two very soon. But when it comes to real-life Nia . . .
It’s like this girl is trying to keep herself an unsolvable mystery, and damn it, she’s doing a good job. She’s so closemouthed about the basic details of her personal life that Cameron sometimes wonders if she’s some kind of spy, or maybe in the witness protection program; it would explain why her father is so paranoid about letting her out of the house, why he refused to send her to school. Maybe Nia’s dear old dad was a superhacker himself, hiding out with his daughter in the last place they’d ever think to look for him, and teaching Nia everything he knows.
Only when he asks her, she says no, she’s self-taught—that the internet was like a car and her father gave her the keys. She’s learned to drive all on her own.
My dad didn’t even give me that much, Cameron writes back. He had a literal internet empire, but it all crashed and burned around the time I was born. He never talked about it, but he never got over it.
My father won’t talk about the past either.
Cameron asks, What past? What happened?
There’s a long pause before Nia answers. I don’t remember. I must have been too young. But it was something bad, I think. Really bad. Something terrible. It was why we came here. It’s why he wants to keep me so close.
What about your mother?
I don’t have a mother, Nia says. The words glow stark against the screen; even without inflection, Cameron feels their sadness.
I’m sorry.
Father never talks about that either.
Cameron feels himself nodding. Even without knowing the details, a portrait of Nia’s life emerges—a life not unlike his own. Loss, secrets, solitude: it all sounds familiar.
Listen, when will I see you again? he asks, and goes wide-eyed as a photo lights up the screen. It’s Nia, her hair tumbling like two wild waterfalls over her shoulders—her bare shoulders. Her hair is draped just so, making her look like a sea nymph in a Pre-Raphaelite painting, so that he can’t exactly see anything, but he can also see more than enough: a tantalizing strip of creamy, unblemished skin between those cascading red waves, and a shadow that could be the innermost swell of a breast, and—“Oh my God,” he says, out loud, feeling his cheeks turn bright red. “Get it together, man.”
Look all you like, the caption reads.
I’d rather see that in person, he replies, then adds a wink to take the pressure off, so she’ll know he’s kidding, though of course he isn’t, at all.
Maybe someday.
He can feel her toying with him. It’s okay. He likes being toyed with. Like at school? Or the art museum? What were you doing there?
I told you—looking for you.
Cameron doesn’t believe that one for a second, but it’s so adorable that he doesn’t care. So you’re stalking me.
I’d have to do it at least three more times for it to be stalking.
Not that Cameron would mind being stalked by Nia. As it is, he never knows when he might see her. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. Like the museum incident—just a few days after their hallway encounter, he’d nearly collided with her during a Senior Week scavenger hunt at the Cleveland Museum of Art. He’d made the mistake of geotagging a photo, and his ever-useful AR lenses had pinged him to warn of an incoming awkward fan encounter—a gaggle of young teenage girls sending excited texts that Cameron Ackerson, Celebrity Lightning Kid, had been spotted near the Armor Court gallery. He’d hidden himself in a hurry, breaking away from his team and ducking into a dark room lit by four neon tubes on the wall. There was only one other person in the room, and when she turned toward him, he nearly yelped out loud: it was Nia, gently lit by the neon glow, smiling at him.
“Hi,” he’d stammered, and then—and he could hardly think of it without cringing—he’d flipped her a sort of dorky royal wave, which he now recognized as the moment he’d completely blown his chances of moving in for a hug, a kiss, even a high-five. Instead, they’d managed only a couple minutes of stilted conversation, just “Hi” and “How are you?” before his devices started blowing up with a sea of WHERE ARE YOU messages from his friends.
“Shit, I have to go. But you could come with me? I could introduce you—”
She shook her head so furiously that Cameron couldn’t help feeling a little bit hurt. Is she embarrassed to be seen with me?
“I can’t. I’ve been out too long already. Another time,” she said, and swept out the door before he could even ask her when. He spent the rest of the day in a funk, resisting the urge to text her—Juaquo is always telling him not to be too eager with girls, that nobody likes a desperado. But being cagey with Nia is hard. Not just because he likes her so much, but because he can’t help noticing that she seems to like him, too.
It’s Saturday, he writes. Big plans tonight? I’m going to a party.
Sounds fun, she types back.
You could come.
I wish, she replies immediately, and Cameron sighs with frustration. It’s what he was expecting, but still: disappointing. He sends a frowning emoji.
Okay. Gotta get ready. See you.
Nia, always cryptic, sends a last message before signing off.
Maybe you will.
* * *
The party is in Gates Mills, a swank neighborhood twenty minutes outside the city. Cameron doesn’t know anyone who lives there—and he didn’t think his friends did, either. Emma Marston, a girl he knows from Robotics Club, picks him up in her battered Skylark and keeps up a steady stream of chatter between her passengers that distracts Cameron as they drive out of his own neighborhood with its modest, close-set bungalows, heading east through a concrete landscape of strip malls and into the leafy suburbs. It’s not until they’re pulling up in front of a massive brick house, lights blazing from all the windows onto its manicured front yard, that he understands why everyone was so insistent that he come.
“Listen,” Emma says, turning around in the driver’s seat to look at him. “Don’t get mad, but I think you should know that we only wrangled an invite to this thing because we promised everyone we’d bring the lightning guy. You’re our ticket in.”
Cameron gapes.
“You used my name to get into a party?” he squawks, even as he uses his abilities to peek into Emma’s phone and confirm that yes, this is exactly what she did. For half a second, she looks guilty.
Then she shrugs.
“Whatever, man. It’s not like you were using it, and somebody should.”
“That’s twisted,” Cameron says.
Next to him, Emma’s sister Julia pokes him in the ribs. “You’ll thank us. Come on.”
He does.
At first, it is kind of fun. A cheer erupts when Cameron walks in, and everyone wants to get next to him, and he even lets himself imagine that maybe this could be his life now: making command appearances at cool parties full of pretty people, riding that wave of viral fame for as long as it takes him where the cool kids are. But after an hour, his friends disappear into another part of the house, and Cameron doesn’t follow them. The party is all over social media, and the beer he’s drinking is only making the cybernetic noise more intrusive and harder to control—not to mention that he’s about one terrible techno beat away from using his abilities to replace the DJ’s entire playlist with Nickelback’s greatest hits just to teach him a lesson . . .
I need to get out of here before I do something stupid.
* * *
A moment later, the door closes behind him and Cameron is alone—outside on the broad front porch of the house, the night air cool on his skin. Even with the noise of the par
ty seeping through the windows, it’s quiet out here compared to the city, and dark. Peaceful. He decides to wait out here until it’s time to go, settling into a nearby wicker chair and loading up a game on his AR lenses.
He’s just used a virtual RPG to blow a digital zombie to bits when he realizes that someone is standing in the shadows just a few feet away, watching him.
“So, are you sure you aren’t stalking me?” Nia says.
Cameron leaps to his feet. “You’re here!” he squeals, and then coughs, lowering his voice an octave, adding, “I mean, you’re here. That’s cool.”
Nia shrugs, indicating the house. “I’m friends with a bunch of these people,” she says, and then rolls her eyes. “Or, well, ‘friends.’ You know what I mean?”
Cameron smiles, thinking of his own entrée into the party. “Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Did you want to go back in, or . . .”
“No.”
The smile becomes a relieved grin. “Me neither. Why don’t we take a walk?”
This time, neither one of them is in a hurry. They wander together for half an hour, letting the thump of the bass and the laughter of the party guests fade behind them as the night closes in. The homes here are enormous and private, separated from each other by wide, landscaped side yards and screened by thick stands of trees.
“We used to live in a place like this,” he says. “Before the dot-com crash. I was just a baby so I don’t remember it, but there are pictures. It’s kind of crazy.”
“The dot-com crash,” Nia echoes. “Your father’s company?”
“In ruins,” he says. “A fallen empire. The crazy thing is, what he built is all still there, somewhere. My dad was really ahead of his time. He had this idea that he was going to make a virtual utopia where people could connect online, only this was back before ‘online’ really even existed. He coded this entire thing, like a virtual city. It was going to be called Oz, because, you know, the whole ‘Whiz’ thing.”