by Vernor Vinge
"But that's way out at Borrego Springs, in the desert."
"How did you know? I really had to dig for that."
"My mother, she's doing 411 work for them." Oops. Come to think of it, what he had seen of Ma's work this afternoon was probably privileged.
Miri was watching him with genuine interest. "She's working with them? That's great! Knowing the connection would put us way ahead. If you could ask your mother ...?"
"I dunno." Juan leaned back and looked at the schedule his mother had posted at home. All her desert work was under a ten-day embargo. Even that much information would not have been visible to outsiders. He checked out the privilege certificates. Juan knew his mother pretty well. He could probably guess how she had encrypted the details. And maybe get some solid corroboration. He really wanted to pass this exam, but ... Juan hunched forward a little. "I'm sorry. It's under seal."
"Oh." Miri watched him speculatively. Being the first to discover a Foxwarner movie setup, a Summer Movie, would give Fairmont the inside track on story participation. It would be a sure-fire A in the exam; the size of such a win wouldn't be clear until well into the movie season, but there would be some income for at least the five years of the movie's copyright.
If this issue had come up with Bertie Todd, there'd now be intense pleadings for him to think of his future and the team and do what his Ma would certainly want him to do if she only knew, namely break into her data space. But after a moment, the girl just nodded. "That's okay, Juan. It's good to have respect."
She moved back to the boxes and began rummaging again. "Let's go with what I've already got, namely that Foxwarner is running an operation in San Diego, and some of their Cinema Fellows have been fooling around in Torrey Pines Park." She pulled out a rack of ... they looked like milk cartons, and set them on top of another box. "Emrebs," she explained opaquely. She reached deeper into the open box and retrieved a pair of massive plastic goggles. For a moment he thought this was scuba gear, but they wouldn't cover the nose or mouth. They didn't respond to info pings; he searched on their physical appearance.
"In any case," she continued, even as she pulled out two more pairs of goggles, "the background research will fit with my unlimited team's work. We're trying to scope out the movie season's big secrets. So far, we're not focusing on San Diego, but Annette reached some of the same conclusions about Foxwarner that I did. You wanna be on my unlimited, too? If this works tonight, we can combine the results."
Oh. That was really quite a generous offer. Juan didn't answer immediately. He pretended to be fully distracted by all the strange equipment. In fact, he recognized the gadgets now; there was a good match in the 2005 Jane's Sensors. But he couldn't find a user's manual. He picked up the first pair of goggles and turned it this way and that. The surface of the plastic was a passive optical lacquer, like cheap grocery wrap in reverse; instead of reflecting bright rainbow colors, the colors flowed as he turned it, always blending with the true color of the gray plastic walls behind it. It amounted to crude camo-color, pretty useless in an environment this smart. Finally, he replied, kind of incidentally, "I can't be on your unlimited team. I'm already on Bertie's. Maybe it doesn't matter. You know Annette's working with Bertie on the side."
"Oh really?" Her stare locked on him for a moment. Then, "I should have guessed; Annette is just not that bright by herself. So Bertie has been jerking all of us around."
Yeah. Juan shrugged and lowered his head. "So how do these goggles work, anyway?"
Miri seemed to stew over Annette for a few seconds more. Then she shrugged too. "Remember, this equipment is old." She held up her pair of goggles and showed him some slide controls in the headstrap. "There's even a physical ‘on' button, right here."
"Okay." Juan slipped the goggles over his head and pulled the strap tight. The headset must have weighed two or three ounces. It was an awkward lump compared to contact lenses. Watching himself from the outside, he looked fully bizarre. The whole top of his face was a bulbous, gray-brown tumor. He could see Miriam was trying not to laugh. "Okay, let's see what it can do." He pressed the "on" button.
Nothing. His enhanced view was the same as before. But when he cleared his contact lenses and looked out with his naked eyes—"It's pitch dark from inside, can't see a thing."
"Oh!" Miri sounded a little embarrassed. "Sorry. Take off your goggles for a minute. We need an emreb." She picked up one of the heavy-looking "milk cartons".
"Meaning?"
"MRE/B." She spelled the word.
"Oh." Meal Ready to Eat, with Battery.
"Yes, one of the little pluses of military life." She twisted it in the middle, and the carton split in two. "The top half is food for the Marine, and the bottom half is power for the Marine's equipment." There were letters physically stenciled on the food container: something about chicken with gravy, and dehydrated ice cream. "I tried eating one of these once." She made a face. "Fortunately, that won't be necessary tonight."
She picked up the bottom half of the emreb, and drew out a fine wire. "This is a weak point in my planning. These batteries are way stale."
"The goggles may be dead anyway." Juan's own clothes often wore out before he outgrew them. Sometimes a few launderings was enough to zap them.
"Oh, no. They built this milspec junk to be tough." Miri set down the battery pack and bent Juan's goggles into a single handful. "Watch this." She wound up like a softball pitcher and threw the goggles into the wall.
The gear smashed upwards into the wall and caromed loudly off the ceiling.
Miriam ran across the room to pick up what was left.
Col. Gu's voice wafted down the stairwell. "Hey! What are you kids doing down there?"
Miri stood up and giggled behind her hand. Suddenly she looked about ten years old. "It's okay, Alice!" She shouted back. "I just, um, dropped something."
"On the ceiling?"
"Sorry! I'll be more careful."
She walked back to Juan and handed him the goggles. "See," she said. "Hardly a scratch. Now we supply power,"—She plugged the wire from the battery into the goggles' headband. —" and you try them again."
He slid the goggles over his eyes and pressed "on". Monochrome reds wavered for a moment, and then he was looking at a strange, grainy scene. The view was not wraparound, just slightly fisheye. In it, Miri's face loomed large, peering in at him. Her skin was the color of a hot oven, and her eyes and mouth glowed bluish-white.
"This looks like thermal infrared," except that the color scheme wasn't standard.
"Yup. That's the default startup. Notice how the optics are built right into the gear? It's kind of like camping clothes: you don't have to depend on a local network. That's going to be a win when we get to Torrey Pines. Try some other sensors; you can get help by sliding the ‘on' button."
"Hey, yes!"
BAT:LOW SENSORS BAT2:LOW
PASSIVE ACTIVE
VIS AMP OK GPR NA
NIR OK SONO NA
>TIR OK XECHO NA
SNIFF NA GATED VIS NA
AUDIO NA GATED NIR NA
SIG NA
The tiny menu floated in the corner of his right eye's view. The battery warning was blinking. He fiddled with his head band and found a pointing device. "Okay, now I'm seeing in full color, normal light. Boogers resolution, though." Juan turned around and then back to Miri. He laughed. "The menu window is fully bizarre, you know. It just hangs there at the edge of my view. How can I tag it to the wall or a fixed object?"
"You can't. I told you this gear is old. It can't orient worth zip. And even if it could, its little pea-brain isn't fast enough to do image slews."
"Huh." Juan knew about obsolete systems, but he didn't use them much. With equipment like this, there could be no faerie overlays. Even ordinary things like interior decoration would all have to be real.
There were lots of other boxes, but no inventory data. Some of them must have belonged to the Goofus; they had handwritten labels, like "Prof. and Mrs. W
illiam Gu, Dept of English, UC Davis" and "William Gu Sr., Rainbow's End, Irvine, CA". Miri carefully moved these out of the way. "Someday William will know what do to with all this. Or maybe grandmother will change her mind, and come visit us again."
They opened more of the USMC boxes and poked around. There were wild equipment vests, more pockets than you ever saw around school. The vests weren't documented anywhere. The pockets were for ammunition, Juan speculated. For emrebs, Miri claimed; and they might need a lot of the batteries tonight, since even the best of them tested "WARNING: LOW CHARGE". They dismembered the emrebs and loaded batteries onto two of the smallest vests. There were also belt-mount keypads for the equipment. "Hah. Before this is over, we'll be wiggling our fingers like grownups."
They were down to the last few boxes. Miri tore open the first. It was filled with dozens of camo-colored egg shapes. Each of them sprouted a triple of short antenna spikes. "Feh. Network nodes. A million times worse than what we have, and just as illegal to use in Torrey Pines Park."
Miri pushed aside several boxes that were stenciled with the same product code as the network nodes. Behind them was one last box, bigger than the others. Miri opened it ... and stood back with exaggerated satisfaction. "Ah so. I was hoping Bill hadn't thrown these out." She pulled out something with a stubby barrel and a pistol grip.
"A gun!" But it didn't match anything in Jane's Small Arms.
"Nah, look under ‘sensor systems'." She grabbed a loose battery and snugged it under the barrel. "Even point blank, I bet this couldn't hurt a fly. It's an all-purpose active probe. Ground penetrating radar and sonography. Surface reflection xray. Gated laser. We couldn't get this at a sporting goods store. It's just too perfect for offensive snooping."
"...It's got attachments, too."
Miri peered into the box and retrieved a metal rod with a flared end. "Yeah, that's for the radar; it fits on right here. Supposedly it's great for scoping out tunnels." She noticed Juan's eyeing this latest find and smiled teasingly. "Boys...! There's another one in the box. Help yourself. Just don't try it out here. It would set off alarms big time."
In a few minutes they were both loaded down with batteries, plugged into the probe equipment, and staring at each other through their goggles. They both started laughing. "You look like a monster insect!" she said. In the infra-red, the goggles were big, black bugeyes, and the equipment vests looked like chitinous armor, glowing brightly where there was an active battery.
Juan waved his probe gun in the air. "Yeah. Killer insects." Hmm. "You know, we look so bizarre.... I bet if we find Foxwarner down in Torrey Pines, we might end up in the show." That sort of thing happened, but most consumer participation was in the form of contributed content and plot ideas.
Miri laughed. "I told you this was a good project."
* * *
Miri called a car to take them to Torrey Pines. They clumped up the stairs and found Mr. Gu standing with William the Goofus. Mr. Gu looked like he was trying to hide a smile. "You two look charming." He glanced at William. "Are you ready to go?"
William might have been smiling, too. "Any time, Bill."
Mr. Gu walked the three of them to the front door. Miri's car was already pulling up. The sun had slipped behind a climbing wall of coastal fog, and the afternoon was cooling off.
They pulled their goggles off and walked down the lawn, Juan in front. Behind him, Miri walked hand in hand with William. Miriam Gu was respectful of her parents, but flippant too. With her grandfather it was different, though Juan couldn't tell if her look up at William was trusting or protective. It was bizarre either way.
The three of them piled into the car, William taking the back-facing seat. They drove out through East Fallbrook. The neighborhood enhancements were still pretty, though they didn't have the coordinated esthetic of the homes right by Camp Pendleton. Here and there, homeowners showed advertising.
Miri looked back at the ragged line of the coastal fog, silhouetted against the pale bright blue of the sky. "'The fog is brazen here,'" she quoted.
"'Reaching talons across our land'," said Juan.
"'Pouncing.'" she completed, and they both laughed. That was from the Hallowe'en show last year, but to the Fairmont students it had a special meaning. There was none of that twentieth century wimpiness about the fog's "little cat feet." Evening fog was common near the coast, and when it happened laser comm got whacked—and The World Changed. "Weather says that most of Torrey Pines Park will be under fog in an hour."
"Spooky."
"It'll be fun." And since the park was unimproved, it wouldn't make that much difference anyway.
The car turned down Reche Road and headed east, toward the expressway. Soon the fog was just an edge of low clouds beneath a sunny afternoon.
William hadn't said a word since they got aboard. He had accepted a pair of goggles and couple of batteries, but not an equipment vest. Instead, he carried an old canvas bag. His skin looked young and smooth, but with that sweaty sheen. William's gaze wandered around, kind of twitchy. Juan could tell that the guy had contacts and a wearable, but his twitchiness was not like a grownup trying to input to smart clothes. It was more like he had some kind of disease.
Juan searched on the symptoms he was seeing AND'ed with gerontology. The strange-looking skin was a regeneration dressing; that was a pretty common thing. As for the tremors.... Parkinson's? Maybe, but that was a rare disease nowadays. Alzheimer's? No, the symptoms didn't match. Aha: "Alzheimer's Recovery Syndrome". Ol' William must have been a regular vegetable before his treatments kicked in. Now his whole nervous system was regrowing. The result would be a pretty healthy person even if the personality was randomly different from before. The twitching was the final reconnect with the peripheral nervous system. There were about fifty thousand recovering Alzheimer's patients these days. Bertie had even collaborated with some of them. But up close and in person ... it made Juan queasy. So okay that William went to live with his kids during his recovery. But their enrolling him at Fairmont High was gross. His major was listed as "hardcopy media—nongraded status"; at least that kept him out of people's way.
Miri had been staring out the window, though Juan had no idea what she was seeing. Suddenly she said, "You know, this is your friend Bertie Toad Vomit." She pulled an incredible face, a fungus-bedecked toad that drooled nicely realistic slime all the way to the seat between them.
"Oh, yeah? Why is that?"
"He's been on my case all semester, jerking me around, spreading rumors about me. He tricked that idiot Annette, so she'd push me into teaming with you—not that I'm complaining about you, Juan. This is working out pretty well." She looked a little embarrassed. "It's just that Bertie is pushy as all get out."
Juan certainly couldn't argue against that. But then he suddenly realized: "You two are alike in some ways."
"What!"
"Well, you're both as pushy as all get out."
Miri stared at him open-mouthed, and Juan waited for an explosion. But he noticed that William was watching her with a strange smile on his face. She shut her mouth and glared at Juan. "Yeah. Well. You're right. Alice says it may be my strongest talent, if I can ever put a cork in it. In the meantime, I guess I can be pretty unpleasant." She looked away for a moment. "But besides us both being up-and-coming dictators, I don't see any similarities between me and Bertie. I'm loud. I'm a loner. Bertie Toad is sneaky and mean. He has his warty hands into everything. And no one knows what he really is."
"That's not true. I've known Bertie since sixth grade; I've known him well for almost two semesters. He's a remote student, is all. He lives in Evanston."
She hesitated, maybe looking up "Evanston". "So have you ever been to Chicago? Have you ever met Bertie in person?"
"Well, not exactly. But last Thanksgiving I visited him for almost a week." That had been right after the pills really started giving Juan results. "He showed me around the museums piggyback, like a 411 tour. I also met his parents, saw their house. Faking all
that would be next to impossible. Bertie's a kid just like us." Though it was true that Bertie hadn't introduced Juan to many of his friends. Sometimes it seemed like Bertie was afraid that if his friends got together, they might cut him out of things. Bertie's great talent was making connections, but he seemed to think of those connections as property that could be stolen from him. That was sad.
Miri wasn't buying any it: "Bertie is not like us, Juan. You know about Annette. I know he's wormed into a lot of groups at school. He's everything to everyone, a regular Mr. Fixit." Her face settled into a look of brooding contemplation, and she was silent for a moment.
They were off Reche now, and on the southbound. The true view was of rolling hills covered by endless streets and houses and malls. If you accepted the roadway's free enhancements, you got placid wilderness, splashed with advertising. Here and there were subtle defacements, the largest boulders morphing into trollishness; that was probably the work of some Pratchett belief circle. Their car passed the Pala off-ramp and started up the first of several miles-long ridges that separated them from Escondido and the cut across to the coast.
"Last fall," Miri said, "Bertram Todd was just another too-smart kid in my language class. But this semester, he's caused me lots of inconvenience, lots of little humiliations. Now he has Attracted My Attention." That did not sound like a healthy thing to do. "I'm gonna figure out his secret. One slip is all it takes."
That was the old saying: Once your secret is outed anywhere, however briefly, it is outed forever. "Oh, I don't know," said Juan. "The way to cover a slip is to embellish it, hide it in all sorts of fake secrets."
"Hah. Maybe he is something weird. Maybe he's a corporate team."
Juan laughed. "Or maybe he's something really weird!" Over the next few miles, he and Miri hit on all the cinema clichés: Maybe Bertie was an artificial boy, or a superbrain stuck in a bottle under Fort Meade. Maybe Bertie was a front for alien invaders, even now taking over the worldwide net. Maybe he was an old Chinese war program, suddenly growing to sentience, or the worldwide net itself that had finally awakened with superhuman—and certainly malignant—powers.