There was data before it turned into data, so he was told. The Weave is not the whole world and everything carries information. Appearance, possessions, vocabulary. Manner, motivation. Outcomes.
For the last two weeks, Zach had been observing Mister Lizney. He had had his unit monitored, he even had some of the man’s clothes and pocket items chipped. His teacher lived in a modest home, more modest even than the orphanage. He kept no mementos on display, nor did he ever look at any when Zach revised the surveillance footage. Mister Lizney spent most of his alone-time immersed, probably monitoring his students. He might even know that Zach was watching him, but that didn’t seem likely, because if he did, something would have changed between them.
This is what Zach had observed so far. Lizney presented himself as the first wall for his students to climb. A hermit with no history who taught low rankers about the Weave — and yet he didn’t wear a symbiot. That was curious.
Today he greeted Zach at the door and waved him in. He had a wand in his mouth and a couple of handscreens wedged under his arms. Always busy with more than one project. Zach reached out to catch the screens before they fell. Lizney had stiff movements and always dropped things.
‘Why, thank you.’ He took the wand from his mouth. As he walked he rubbed his hip. It must be sore today. If Zach had a sylus, he would be able to scan him for implants. He would have to find a way to get one into the unit. After he’d found a way to get one, that is. He was always looking for new ways to gather data.
The man had thinning hair, which he must have chosen not to repair. When asked about it, he claimed he would revive his scalp when he could get around to it. Lizney wore his helmet almost permanently, a silver cap with tinted lenses that went from purple to opaque when he immersed. He wore a range of indoor kimonos with bright patterns that confused the eyes. In his off-time he enjoyed a little mesh, but never around the students.
Miles was a bit plastic in the face. His skin was pale, but turned a deep tan if he caught too much sun. Zach thought the sheen of it looked unnatural. Zoom-ups over one thousand per cent caught a regularity that indicated manufacturing. His teeth too had been replaced at some point.
Mister Lizney avoided the topic of his skin; he said there had been an accident and didn’t like talking about it. ‘This is one of those mysteries you are to solve, young Musashi.’ His smile was sad. His smiles were often sad. It was the only time Zach liked him, when he smiled like that. At other times Lizney’s face and manners seemed artificial and he acted as though he was barely managing to put up with his students.
‘How are you today? Tired yet?’
‘No, sir,’ Zach replied automatically.
“‘No, sir.” Very good. We can tick off “Shows continued respect for his elders” then. Of course I know your beta waves are down so you’re either lying to me or you have convinced yourself.’ He didn’t wait for an answer, but bent carefully into a seat, one of two that were angled together by the small window, and beckoned for his screens back. When Zach took the other chair Lizney tapped the air with the wand and drew a vertical line.
‘I see you are on track for your endurance badge. Very good. Now there is a note here from your foster. He says you’re having trouble with the other children.’
‘He said that?’ Zach pulled his helmet from his pocket, flicked it open and quickly looked through the lenses to see the overlay Mister Lizney had superimposed in the room. It gave Zach’s records, his stream, in an orderly but complicated arrangement of documents, footage and graphical analysis. Lizney pushed the note from Tom towards him with the wand and Zach read it quickly.
Oh, he thought. Bronwyn.
‘It’s not all the kids, I don’t see much of them at the moment. I’m shut in my study day and night. There’s just this one annoying girl. She poured cold water on me while I was under and then Tom caught me as I was chasing her ... hey, why are you smiling?’
Lizney fought to keep the twitching corners of his mouth from turning into a grin. Zach was amusing him. Everything seemed so funny to Lizney. ‘Maybe she likes you.’
Oh, this is a life talk. ‘She’s just a silly girl.’
‘She won’t always be. And someday you might not be a silly boy.’ Zach didn’t want to answer. He just wanted to have his lesson and go. ‘Okay, okay. You still choose to keep that block up. When you change your mind I am here to talk. If you would like.’
Not likely, weirdie.
Lizney whisked the stream closed and the air was empty save for the dust motes.
‘Now, I have to talk to you about what has been happening in Korea.’ His teacher took a deep breath. ‘You will have noticed in your last immersion that there was an increase in red zones.’ Zach nodded. ‘And you spent some time investigating the reason why.’ There was no denying it. It was in his stream. ‘I have to ask you, for your own safety, not to try to cross the barriers between you and this information. There is a quarantine over the area and Services is asking everyone to keep clear. Both on and off the Weave.’
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know if anybody knows.’
‘Is it the psionics?’
‘It seems to be inorganic. You saw that on the satellite feed. Points off for not remembering. And points off because it was due to your obsession with the psis. Your bias is clouding you.’
Zach felt annoyed again. He should have remembered that but he didn’t deserve to be fined for it. ‘Pause it, why does this affect the Weave?’
Lizney smiled. ‘Okay, you can have some points back for asking. The answer I have been given is that the Weave quarantine is a precautionary measure.’
‘So what is it?’ Zach asked again.
‘Look, Zachary. Feel free to watch the Weave for more information. At the moment Services have the matter well in hand. Now, do you have any questions for me today, or should we look over your math?’
Zach thought for a moment. He had been meaning to ask about Lizney’s lack of symbiot for a while, but it seemed rude to ask.
‘I don’t know how to ask. It is personal.’
‘Don’t be shy, Musashi. I am here to be asked anything.’
‘It is about you.’
‘I see.’ Lizney’s warmth disappeared. ‘What have you found out?’
I’ve found out you’re afraid of what I will find. That means it must be something bad. He would put a search through the malefactor list, maybe a visual would turn up something. ‘I haven’t found anything out yet, but I know that most teachers have symbiots. You don’t.’
‘Oh, I see.’ His relief was obvious. Even to a thirteen-year-old. ‘I’m not sure I can answer that without giving away the whole mystery. Why do you think I don’t wear a symbiot? Reason it out for me.’
‘I think you’re not allowed one,’ Zach said.
‘And is that the only possibility? Could it not be by my own choice?’
‘But you are a Weave teacher. And a scout master. Everyone old enough has one, even Lily.’ A small one, like a bangle.
Miles’s smile was thin and fixed, but he nodded at each suggestion. ‘Or I might value my privacy.’
‘Nyeah.’ Zach batted that idea away with his hand. ‘You’re not superstitious.’ Believing in privacy was like believing that a camera could steal your soul.
‘Oh? Is superstition the only reason for people to want privacy?’
‘Well, no. Of course not. Bad people need privacy to hide what they are doing.’
‘Maybe I am a bad person,’ Lizney suggested.
‘But then you wouldn’t be allowed to be my scout master,’ Zach answered.
‘True. Maybe I have something to hide?’
‘Like what?’
‘Musashi. I thought we had established the rules. That is for me to know and you to find out. I’m not going to tell you anything. You won’t learn that way.’
‘So you are hiding something,’ Zach said triumphantly.
‘Of course I am. That is the challenge of the exercise. I’m glad you have finally grasped the aims. Have you considered a medical explanation?’ Mister Lizney asked. He must be trying to confuse him. To dilute his perception. Zach must be on the right track,
‘I haven’t heard of anything like that,’ Zach answered.
‘Have you looked into it at all? I can assure you such studies do exist, and are freely available.’ Zach quickly flicked to the Weave, data mode, searching by phrase and keyword. ‘I’ll wait,’ Lizney goaded. He wasn’t lying, there were many documented cases where a symbiot connection was denied for health reasons. There was even a routine medical check before inception was allowed. ‘Perhaps I have religion.’
Zach cursed as again his search showed that there were numerous belief systems that imposed bans on the wearing of symbiots. Lizney had done it, he’d made him uncertain.
‘Zach, I give you points for your query. Even when one is uncertain, one should not hesitate to tell their teacher what they are thinking.’
‘I felt so sure.’
‘And you were right to express yourself. You deserve the reward. Now, for next week. When I noticed you’ve been reading What We Can See, I made a reading list for you of other classic works that I think have equal merit. Please have a scan of them before our next session.’
Musashi sagged as he read a list of fifteen titles. Fifteen! A children’s picture book, A Stream Runs Through It, to the larger The Eight-day Empire of the Fourth Weave. A tome of eight volumes. Lizney knew all along what Zach was doing and was now throwing obstacles in his path.
Zach picked up his bag, folded his visor down and shoved it in his pocket. ‘Thank you, Mister Lizney.’
‘Thank you, Musashi. I’ll see you next week.’
Sure enough, when he hit the tracks to his next lesson, the surveillance feeds he had connected to Lizney’s apartment had been disconnected. He still had the footage recorded from before though, so his stream hadn’t been rummaged. But if Lizney had known he was watching, he couldn’t trust what he had seen.
Zach looked at the time and swore. ‘Kutzo! I’m late.’ Zach left the tracks at Corona and took an express bus across the city. The rest of his day he went from one tutorial to another. Watanabe for general math, Kelso for code and Belinda Maxwell for Weave history.
By the time he got home his feet were throbbing and his eyes itched. He was a cycle behind on his scouting thanks to Bronwyn and he would have to skip some of his sleep time to catch up and claim his endurance badge. He dropped his bag in his study room and went for a shower.
It didn’t help as much as he had hoped. The warmth made him sleepy and he yawned as he put his visor on and it slipped off his nose. He tried again, but it kept sliding around his face. The inside was greasy with something, it smelt like butter ...
Oh, Bronwyn. Why would you want to bring the wrath of Musashi down upon you?
Wearily, he wiped it clean and began imagining what his revenge should be. Bronwyn didn’t immerse, so there was no opportunity for pranking her on the Weave. He thought about having one of her soft toys replicated on a roboform, and then having it attack her in the night. She’d be terrified! He grinned.
At least it gave him something to pursue. He looked around his neighbourhood for who had a replicator and might allow him to use it. Dozey down the street had one, but he was a mesh-head and the kids were forbidden to associate with him. There was a boy not that much older than Zach who had one too. He lived a short scoot away, but Zach didn’t know him.
He looked at the boy’s stream. Garry Antram, sixteen. Only child. He went to classes centred around culture studies, architecture and organisation. His father had bought him the replicator kit for his birthday and they’d built it together over two nights, just so his son could make his model cities. Windsor Antram, the father, was forty-six years old, partnered to Eliza Barthes, though Garry’s mother was a woman called Jasmin Tosche, who was now with a man who spent most of his time in the Cape. They hadn’t had any contact with him in weeks and Garry’s mother was becoming distraught.
Zach hated looking at the lives of other children and redirected his attention. The thing about the mother’s partner disappearing interested him but if he looked through any information connected with Atlantic a flag would go up and he’d have to explain to Mister Lizney what his interest was. The Cape was a no-go zone.
What is my teacher up to now? he wondered. Now that his bugs had been disabled he had to watch from the outside. Zach tuned to the omnipoles near his teacher’s residence and watched. Omnipoles were everywhere in the WU and some people joked that they were the real civilisation and we humans just ran amongst them; they were regularly spaced streetlights, Weave nodes, and held an array of passive sensors and inductive power coils. There were four poles in proximity to Lizney’s home and Zach had each of them adding their data directly to his own stream for processing.
The light in Lizney’s unit went out. A woman rode past on a bicycle. Zach sat and waited, but nothing more happened.
So why does a man like Lizney not have a symbiot? Belief system, impairment or because he had a negative assessment from the ups? What exactly was a ‘negative assessment’? How did one get ‘negatively assessed’? Technically, he knew that the Will could restrict someone’s activities if they deemed them counter to the Will, but in reality he couldn’t see how this would ever apply to a person.
He scanned through the Weave and compiled a better definition: when the actions of a given Citizen are deemed to be of negative effect to the World Union. It was a common phrase that meant little; Citizens had actions denied all the time, every day. But what kind of action would the Will decide was such a threat as to deny a person a commonplace item like a symbiot?
Of the sample cases he looked through, there was nothing like it. Unless of course he just couldn’t access such cases. There was lots of data behind the Lizney wall he couldn’t see. As he was only thirteen, the Will determined that not all information would be available to him. This would repeal as he got older, and when he became a Citizen and gained more value.
It didn’t make any sense anyway. If Lizney was a malefactor, and the Will was denying him a symbiot, surely such an untrustable man wouldn’t be allowed in charge of twenty impressionable children?
Maybe it was privacy. Zach didn’t really know what that was. It was something a lot of older people spoke of. They didn’t see the Weave as he did, didn’t always have their streams on. A stream to him was just like clothing, you always wore it. To be out of contact with the Weave, to have part of your life go unrec, was a real anxiety for him. He couldn’t wait to get a symbiot.
Zach felt himself fading into sleep, his helmet automatically starting to pull him out. He had to stay awake and he demersed just enough to reach into his bag for the stimulants he had been sneakily collecting. He needed something.
He spent the rest of the night pinging around as fast and randomly as he could. He couldn’t concentrate enough to read. He fixed three broken links all by himself that were easily corroborated and tagged for implementation.
The WU was working towards a day when the information on the Weave would be cross-referenced and sacrosanct; parity. In the future, Miz Maxwell told him, there might not be a need for scouts to look for errata, as it would be impossible to enter false information.
Bronwyn was clearing the kitchen when he clicked off the next morning and went down for some breakfast.
She giggled as he studiously ignored her and requested his food allowance from the fridge. Since he was living out of sync with the other kids, most of his meals were automated ones.
The other guardian of the orphanage was preparing the ingredients for lunch and tutted at the girl.
‘Now, now, Bronwyn. You’re even. Play nice,’ Lily said. She stirred a large pot of spiced beans and legumes. It smelt good to Zach and he hoped she would save him some for tomorrow.
‘Yes, Miz Patch.’
Zach sat down and lathered spreads on plain toast. Bronwyn chopped apples but kept a wary eye on him in case he was about to throw something at her.
‘Will that be enough for you, Zach?’ Lily asked. ‘Would you like some tea?’
‘Yes, please. I’m pretty tired.’
‘You look it. It was wrong of Bronwyn to interfere with your studies. As penance she will be taking over some of your chores until your badge is complete.’
‘I’ll what?’
‘Don’t protest. It’s all you deserve. You know Zach is working hard and the least we can do is support him.’
Manifestations Page 4