by Jim Keen
“No, especially these days,” Conroy said. “When your family interacts with others, how does it work?”
Squire was silent for a moment, his breath loud. “What is it, Patsy? What have I done?”
Conroy watched his face in the quiet that followed, traced emotions as they roiled below the surface. “It’s an omission, a lack of having done, that we will discuss in time.” Conroy placed the glass back on the table. The room was silent apart from the faint hiss of the drones and the occasional creak of stretching metal. “I understand you are police, but what I’m interested in learning is how you and yours go about an everyday existence.”
“I do the introductions,” Squire said. He sat, resigned, knew the truth was his only way out. “Most of the neighbors want to be our friends because they think I can help them. Some knew me before the phase change, think that makes a difference. I help in little ways, get extra water rations, or more time to pay for food. Once I’ve got to know them, checked them out with Central Dispatch, I let Samantha deal with any negotiations. We trade my protection for their goods and services.”
“You delegate responsibilities for the interactions after your initial review?”
“That’s a technical way of putting it, but yes.”
“So, if you had someone to introduce you to more people, you could extend the range of your help. Bring more families under your wing.”
“I guess, but that’s not what I want, never did. Power does nothing for me, I just want my day to day to stay the same, do a shift and then be with my family.”
“Then why don't you franchise?”
Squire frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Find another suitable cop, and add them to your team. They pay you to help build your network.”
“That how you’ve done all this?” Squire looked around.
“In a way, one person at a time.” Conroy reached down and removed his composite foot; scratched his stump. It always itched when he was tired. He placed it on the table with a light clack, the fabric’s weave glinting under the overhead lights. “Power is like roots from a tree, fractal, each piece linking to its neighbor. That is our next step, you see. The Bridge is becoming a franchise, my family splitting and seeding other zones across the country; east, west, and north to start. Vincent here”—he nodded to One-Eye—“will take his leave soon, to the misty waters of the Bay Area. The Golden Gate aggregated long before we did, though that is based around residential units, not a factory such as this one. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Squire looked at Conroy, then shook his head. “No.”
“America is nothing but a rusting hulk taking in water. You, me, we, need to jump ship, start over. Think the union will hold? Another five years at the most, then all we will have is each other. Fourth Ward is building the future now. Here, San Francisco, Chicago. But like anything under construction we remain vulnerable to weaknesses, internal and out. Any rotting structural member could bring the edifice tumbling down; the liar, the cheat, the diseased spar that corrupts. The once friend who now betrays.”
“You talk as if I had a choice,” Squire said at last. “That’s not what happened.”
Conroy turned to the video feed. “What do you think of her?”
“She’s nothing special, just your typical veteran trying to stay alive.”
“A nobody capable of fighting her way onto the Bridge? That makes no sense. She is a person of talent, Michael, someone an old friend should have told me about long before this face to face.”
“We’ve only worked together a few months.”
“Twelve.”
“I can control her.”
“Does this look like control?” Conroy’s voice rose to a shout; his hands gripped the table edge, knuckles white. With an effort he withdrew into himself, tucked his emotions away. “Do you think I feel safe and secure with her loose?”
Squire stood, face red in the soft light. “If you hadn’t jacked me, if you’d just called like any normal person, she’d be at home now, saving up for a Virt fuck or whatever she does. You’re the one that insisted on these theatrics.”
“Your disrespect had reached a level where no sit-down would suffice.”
Squire’s skin was pale as if cast from old wax. “Is that what this is? One last conversation?”
Conroy looked at the screen. The gritty black-and-white display showed the woman and boy moving through a tunnel. They came to a ladder; the woman consulted a wrist screen, then moved upward as smooth as oiled smoke.
“Is our business complete?” he said to One-Eye.
“Yes sir. General Alisson has all but one shipment; those are being printed now. We had a problem with plasma on the last batch, some form of pollutant, and had to refinish them. Per the agreement, we withheld five for our own trials, three patchworks and two augments. They are in Niner’s cold room awaiting activation.”
“How many do you suggest?”
One-Eye looked at the screen and hesitated. “She seems original, no reprinted parts. Speed and stamina, but limited strength and little imagination. I’d suggest one patchwork.”
“Make it one of each.”
“Capture or kill?” One-Eye said.
Conroy turned to Squire. “Well, that is up to you, isn’t it?”
15
“The first major change to city planning was, of course, fully autonomous vehicles. Once people divested themselves of car ownership, parking structures and street edges became new urban playgrounds.
The second major change was the Dyson engine. Overnight personal aerial transportation was a fact of life, and only vestigial car use remained at surface level.
What had appeared a boon to town planning—the reemergence of a bucolic existence among the streets—was unfortunately soon destroyed by the wave of unemployment. What could have been canals and urban parks became shanty towns for the homeless.
With street crime rising, and the viability of aerial transport, it was no surprise when the wealthy moved into high-rise towers. The challenge facing those left behind is how to re-humanize ground level within our severely limited budgets.”
Simon Bellerin, “Urban Design in the Age of Automation”, RIBA Lecture, London, 2050
Alice held up a hand; Red sagged to the floor, legs splayed in front of him, large boots catching the bright lights. Her ribs throbbed, her legs trembled, and her jaw was swollen from the onset of major stim withdrawal. She forced herself upright and checked for supplies. There was only the knife, pistol and Bunny Bopper left. The gun was loaded with plastic shrapnel rounds, and she had a clip of ricochets in her right thigh pocket. After that, she’d be holding off Fourth Ward with a bad attitude and body odor.
“What are you doing?” Red said.
She looked at him in more detail. The punk hair made him seem older, but he was young and thin, acne only just starting. His milky-white skin was increasingly rare in New York, and his clothing was strange. It wasn’t from the streets, but didn’t look gang affiliated either.
“Why do you dress like that?” she said.
Red looked down at himself, puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t look street smart, more like a historical photo.”
“Good. It took time to get this right.” He nodded over his shoulder. “That painting is radio waves from an old record cover. This is my uncle’s jacket; he did the back, I did the front. Taught guitar back in the day, now he kinda just sits around keeping out of trouble.”
“What does ‘bollocks’ mean?” She nodded to the white-painted lettering on his arms. He said nothing, just looked at her like she was a total idiot. “Okay, let’s start over. What was your plan when you came in here?”
“Why d’you want to know?”
Alice sighed. Even after a year, people’s distrust of her uniform hurt. She was a cop, sure, but that didn’t mean she had an ulterior motive to everything she did.
“Because I’m lost,” she said, “I’m scared,
and I don’t know what to do next, okay?” She watched him struggle to believe her. “I was a runner too, Red, back in the day.”
“Bollocks.”
“I’m telling you the truth Red—as a kid I was smart enough to realize I was nothing special. My dad was an asshole from day one.”
Red nodded. “I know the feeling.”
“He got what he deserved, the bastard. Mom was sweet until cancer paid a visit. After that Paulie and me—that’s my brother—found ourselves in one of the orphanages.”
“Heard those places were black holes. You did good to get out.”
“Be careful what you wish for. Being thirteen, legal guardian to your younger brother, and living on the streets was no Disneyland. I got a job running for the Mac’s down in Bay Ridge. Took me a few years, but I grifted my way up to infiltration, got jobs cleaning houses for the Ones. Once inside, I’d steal their encryption keys, clean them out. The bosses took everything I earned and bought themselves places in the towers, left us behind.”
“Figures. You can’t trust anyone, especially crooks. I don’t want anything to do with them or being a runner. First job I applied for was working an old rag-n-bone franchise out in Bay Ridge. Two hundred kids were lined up by the time I got there. I asked this jeek how early I should have arrived; he said he lived outside the store, on the off chance he’d get a few hours paid. In the evening his missus brought him a tray of mollusks scraped from the side of boats in the harbor. I told him that trash was full of PCBs and other fun stuff, that you might as well chug a bucket of old engine oil. Laughed in my face.”
“So what did you do?”
“My uncle’s apartment is south facing. I made some window boxes outta these old plastic planks I found. Boosted some dirt from Prospect Park, back before it was a prison. I tried growing starches at first, potatoes, the stuff that keeps you alive, but those big rooftop farms sucked up that market, so I switched to luxury items, strawberries and blueberries. That did well enough to pay the rent.”
“So why are you on the Bridge?”
“Winter. No sun. Need to save up and buy some UV lamps or we’ll starve and—” He stopped. Alice could see Red wanted to say something, but after a long pause he just shook his head and changed the subject. “So how come you’re a cop now?”
“My brother walked me into a drugs deal gone bad. He got death row on Rikers Island, I had the choice of that or the Marines.”
“Not much of a choice.”
“You say that, but there are times I think I made the wrong one. Did two years in the terrestrials, then two in the Colonials, one on Mars, one in rehab. After that there wasn’t much else to do but police.”
Red pulled an old black comb from his jacket and prodded his hair back into shape. “All right, I believe you. I have a midtown mail delivery. I tried skooching across on the ice. That didn’t work, so decided to try the Bridge. Climbed a cable, fell, boom, we met.”
“Worth risking your life for a letter?”
“Get off your throne, officer. Scorchers are supposed to look after each other, but you’re only out for yourself, same as the rest of us.”
Alice’s fingers twitched with the urge to slap him for telling the truth. She inhaled and shook herself. “How were you planning to get to the island?”
“Dunno.” Red stared at her, then dropped his gaze. “I didn’t have much time to make a plan, okay?”
“When you were on the cable, did you see the Bridge layout? Somewhere high up we can get to?”
He looked up with an exhausted smile, face a hundred years old. “Yeah, yeah. I did, yeah.” He shifted, pushed himself upright. “Right at the top there’s this landing pad. It had this helicopter thing on it, chugging out black smoke. Pre-machine-phase stuff, had a long blade that spun round real fast like, cut yer head off if you jump. Fourth Warders were loading these cold boxes into it.”
“How did you know they were cold?”
“’Cos they steamed frost. Fell like snow.”
“What was in them?”
He shrugged. “Hell I know. Wasn’t hanging around up there for intel. They were taking real care though, like they’d be strung from the cables if they dropped them. Anyways, the pad was near these long greenhouses. They were lit super bright. I saw plants in there, fields like, of sunflowers.”
“What?”
“Bank’s symbol.”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” Red looked at her with such an expression of contempt and exasperation that Alice dropped her gaze. “Cops don’t come in here that much,” she finished with a lame shrug.
“Yeah, Scorchers got a black eye and bugged out, typical. Sunflowers are Bank’s sigil. You see that, you know to keep clear. He has thousands of ’em up there. We get to those, we could run our ways across to the other side.”
“You’re not running anywhere, Red. Like I promised, I’m getting you a ride out of here.”
“I’m delivering this letter, don’t try to stop me.”
“I won’t, but I can’t do this and babysit you at the same time. Show me the roof and I’ll call you a cab. After that I’ll get intel and call in backup. Maybe they can use the landing pad you saw.”
“Shit, your plan’s as bad as mine.”
“Maybe our paths converge, maybe not, but will you take my lead or will you bug first chance you get?”
Alice watched him think, run through the options. He was smart, which might keep him alive.
“Okay, sure,” he said.
“Good. Suit, any suggestions?”
“I was wondering when you’d get around to me,” the small speaker said. “I’m not just along for the ride, you know, I’m actively involved in this.”
“So then actively involve yourself in looking for a way to the upper levels.”
“May I suggest climbing every ladder you see? Why I constantly need to point out the obvious is beyond me.”
Alice was about to reply when she saw Red’s puzzled expression. “What?”
“You let it talk to you like that?”
“You’re welcome to search for its warm and sunny side. Me? I haven’t patience to cuddle up to a piece of clothing.”
“Well, really,” Suit grumbled.
Red grinned, a young, innocent look that made her smile back. There was a moment of silence between them, less awkward and adversarial.
“Time to go,” she said, her voice quiet. The truth sat unspoken between them: there was no way Fourth Ward would let her walk off the Bridge. After today’s action, Mr. Bank would make putting her head on a stick his number one priority. “That letter won’t deliver itself, kid.”
16
“The Turing threshold has been surpassed by the modern Mechanical Intelligence, but lesser ‘smart-systems’ can also appear sentient in the right context. In certain symbiotic relations—such as the military or police—they should be awarded the same rights as the wearer.”
“The Nicholson Paper” on rights due to non-Turing smart-systems, presented to UN delegates, 2055
“My jacket? I hate my jacket. It’s an asshole and there’s a no-returns policy at the store. Typical.”
NYPD officer Alice Yu, New York, 2055
Alice wiped her brow. The further they forced themselves along the maintenance corridor, the more it filled with equipment. Welded metal pipes formed organic clusters too hot to touch; smart cabling beeped data codes as they inched past. There was an underlying logic to the construction that reminded her once again of the repurposed NASA ship that ferried her to Mars.
She’d understood that ship, its bootstrapped weapons and life-support systems. Here, something was out of context. The Bridge had a haphazard external appearance, a mechanical accretion driven by short-term needs and wants. The inside was different: organized, planned, meticulous. Something here had prodigious power and data demands. The NYPD’s Grand Central MI required sustenance at this level, but sentient machines cost more than skyscrapers, their locations strictly contro
lled by the UN. Analytical engines were, rightly, regarded as weapons of mass destruction. Misused they could destabilize the world’s political and financial systems, and were afforded oversight with great care. Was there an illegal MI here? If so, how was that even possible?
Alice turned to Red, his pale face pinched and nervous in the gloom. “Time to see where we are,” she said.
He nodded in reply as sweat dripped from his chin.
Alice clicked a toggle on her lapel and microdisplays lit up to scroll NYPD across her chest. The vivid white text pushed the dark away, reflected letters crawling along the worn metal ductwork.
“Subtle,” Red said. “Can you change the lettering at least?”
Alice didn’t have to do anything, Suit switching it to Mama Pajama’s Tequila Shack as they looked at each other.
“Thanks, Suit, big help,” she said.
“Don’t look at me, you’re the one that goes there every Friday night,” it replied.
“You go there? You’re sadder than I thought,” Red said.
“Hey, I like tequila.”
Suit gave a quiet chirp and Alice looked at Red, putting a finger to her lips.
They waited in silence, breath echoing from the damp, curved walls.
“Tactical,” Alice whispered.
“I’m detecting rhythmic vibrations in the surrounding metal, ahead and behind,” Suit said.
“Direction.”
“Converging on our current location.”
“Speed?”
“Forward vibrations have paused; rear have accelerated. Impact frequency suggests something heavy and slow.”
“Trying to force us into an ambush?”
“Such an obvious outcome it didn’t need saying.”
Alice looked back the way they had come. The narrow space glistened in the damp. Had they passed any other exits? None. They’d taken every vertical route they found, each one more choked with cabling, power relays, and data-collation boxes than the last. She was lost now. Before Fourth Ward you could walk across the Bridge in thirty minutes, but crawling though these tunnels was slow and exhausting.