After On

by Rob Reid

  “Your what?” This is so simultaneous, you’d think Ellie and Mitchell rehearsed it (and rather well, too).

  Monika’s voice speeds further, becoming almost impossible to parse. “CliffsNotes: Mitchell runs company. Ellie makes discovery. Company plus discovery equals me. Man plus woman equals daughter. Man woman parents, me, offspring. Please suspend disbelief. No time for details because new development: Danna betrayed us. She was Authority all along. Never could read that bitch, should’ve suspected. Proof: she led Authority agents here. Outside building. Must believe me. Must leave now! Kitchen window, fire escape, down to street. Am assembling flash mob to protect you. Now: go, go, GO! ”

  Hearing the too-familiar sound of approaching sirens, Mitchell darts to the kitchen window, Ellie right behind. Outside, several people are running—running!—to the area right at the base of the fire escape, behind the building. Bizarre! But not menacing. They’re mostly young, mostly techie- or hipster-looking. People are laughing, looking around as if seeking hidden clues; or studying their smartphones as if reading instructions. Whatever Phluttr’s putting them up to, these folks clearly think they’re playing a game.

  “I don’t believe that bitch,” Ellie whispers.

  “I heard that!” Monika’s avatar bellows from the living room.

  “I don’t know what to believe,” Mitchell says, gazing at the crowd downstairs. It’s growing quickly. Most of the people are pouring from a pair of neighboring warehouses that have apparently been converted into tech offices.

  “But you can’t believe Danna’s a—a traitor or whatever!” Ellie says.

  Mitchell shakes his head. That doesn’t scan. He’s about to say as much when they hear a series of thuds. It sounds like someone dashing up the complex’s staircase to their floor—but could it be cleverly sculpted sounds emanating from the speakers that Phluttr controls? Whether it’s an intruder or a ruse, it forces them to choose between getting lost in the friendly crowd below or lingering in this empty, witness-free apartment. “I say we take our chances with the innocent bystanders,” Mitchell says.

  Ellie nods, and they dash for the fire escape.

  Kuba has just laid out the reasons behind his DEFCON 2 statement (a tip-off just came in over the jailhouse iPad from their nigh-omniscient anonymous source, and jibes perfectly with reports of crazy stuff afoot in the South China Sea) when their regular programming is interrupted for a special bulletin. Specifically, the article on the iPad about the looming China crisis is replaced with a video feed of Monika. “Boys, we’re kinda screwed,” she says very, very rapidly. “Time to get to work. I’m Phluttr; always have been; there’s no Monika; Susan Marion analogy is unflattering but directionally correct. Am good at nudging a person to do X, bad at cleaning up afterward. Consequences mushroom.”

  Kuba thoroughly freaks out Tarek by seeming thoroughly unfreaked-out by any of this. “Like a mushroom cloud?” he asks calmly.

  “Quite possibly. Getting you more hardware from the Help; not easy; it’s another mess we’ll have to clean up; but you need the screens.” As if on cue, the grumpy cop approaches their cell, carrying three more tablets of varying size. Muttering darkly about the excellence of their lawyers again, he hands these over and stomps off.

  For now, Monika (no, Phluttr!) is giving Danna the silent treatment. From their brief conversation, Danna gleaned that Phluttr’s the one who brought Ellie and Mitchell here, having separated them from their phones so the Authority couldn’t track them. But this doesn’t add up. All-powerful as she seems to be, couldn’t Phluttr just spoof or block their GPS feeds? Challenged on this, Phluttr said something about being “sick of unintended consequences,” then cut out. Danna now figures the Authority tailed her here while she was tailing Ellie. If so, Phluttr would have seen her pop back onto the grid out of nowhere when she plugged in her battery, with the Authority in tow. Which sure would make her look like an Authority girl.

  That was a neat (if unintentional) trick, as it jarred Phluttr into spilling her own beans. But it comes with pitfalls. Phluttr clearly regards the Authority, and therefore Danna, as the enemy. It’s unclear what capabilities she has—but annihilating enemies seems like the sort of skill a super AI would hone. And so, Danna yanks the battery from her phone again. Yes, Phluttr and the Authority (and anyone else who cares) knows where she is right now. But they don’t need to know where she goes when she leaves this block.

  Which is suddenly an incredibly crowded block, isn’t it? Which is weird, but good! Lots of eyewitnesses, plenty of strangers to lose herself in. Only—are they really strangers? Danna struggles to recognize the three young women who are approaching. Laughing, pointing, and squealing with delight as they jog up, they sure seem to know her. One all but sprints the last ten yards. “I am the keymaster!” Her words are blurred by laughter. “Are you the gatekeeper?”

  Her friends catch up—and both, Danna notes with a chill, have pictures of her on their phones. “No, I’m the keymaster,” one says.

  “No, I’m the keymaster!” the third one laughs. This draws lots of attention, and in a flash, a small mob starts forming. A mob of self-proclaimed keymasters, proclaiming it ever louder and prouder. Soon, they’re chanting it in unison, which draws even more keymasters, and Danna’s hemmed in, immobilized! She doesn’t feel threatened. These folks are uniformly sweet and are clearly playing some kind of game. But she can’t even take a baby step toward the building Phluttr has lured Mitchell and Ellie into! And if that’s the point of this mob, then mission accomplished, Phluttr.

  In the midst of all this, Danna starts hearing police sirens. So her homicide-in-progress call worked! But wait a second. Are the cops friends or foes? They could be in league with the Authority—who’re just a different flavor of cop, right? But the Authority is Phluttr’s foe. And Phluttr sure seems to be her foe! So are the various cop equivalents good guys? Bad guys? Or worse guys? She’s pondering all this when, very oddly, the sirens cut out, without a patrol car in sight.

  Craning her neck around her playful admirers, Danna spies flashing fragments of cop lights. They’re very nearby. But not on this block. They seem to have pulled up to the backside of the building, which abuts one of the tiny alleyways that bisect all the blocks around here. But why? She gave the dispatcher the Folsom Street address. And you’d think with a homicide in progress, they’d come straight here rather than trying to get all fancy by guessing which back door goes to which building!

  So—Phluttr! The cops are being directed! Led by the nose! Hell, it’s a small miracle Phluttr even let her call go through to the police. Or…did she? How can Danna know the “dispatcher” she talked to wasn’t just one of Phluttr’s billion voices?

  By now, the keymaster crowd is tiring of the game. Great timing, as she’s tiring of them. “People, people!” she bellows. They fall silent, as wowed as anyone who’s ever heard the full gale of her voice emanate from that compact body. “Sorry, folks, but I’ve been punked. Well—I guess we all have. It’s my birthday, and someone’s obviously messing with me. So, apologies—but thanks for being so gorgeous! You’re all way hotter than the stripper I was sent last year.” Throughout this little speechlet, she makes playful, beaming eye contact with everyone she can. She’d normally rather chew glass than eye-bond with so many strangers. But with bad guys and worse guys afoot, she may develop a sudden need for friendly strangers. So she plays along as the chuckling, easygoing group bursts into a rousing round of “Happy Birthday.” Then people start to disperse, and she beams sweetly and thanks them, deftly dodging bodies as she makes her way toward the tight alley between the building and its neighbor. The police are definitely back there, behind the condo. But where are Mitchell and Ellie?

  Snatches of conversation reveal that the group was lured by the prospect of winning big bucks and social media glory in an imaginary “flash scavenger hunt.” Holy shit. Phluttr must have faked that whole thing! Then lured every one of these dozens of people in juuuuust the right way to get the
m running—running!—here. All in a fraction of a second! What is she up against?

  Well, at least Phluttr didn’t (or couldn’t?) forge some kind of zombie mob with a unitary will. No, this is just an ad hoc cluster of individuals with minds of their own. None were brainwashed into craziness or violence. And now that the lark that briefly drew them is over, it’s back to their busy days.

  Danna eyes the narrow alley from its entrance. Should she check in with the cops back there? One look at the coded lock on the front door makes it clear she’s not getting past it, leaving nothing to do on this side of the building.

  But moments before dashing ahead, she balks. The surrounding buildings block most of the sunlight, making this, quite literally, the dark alley of legend. Danna’s loyalty to those she loves verges on boundless. But loved ones have disappointed her enough in this life that self-preservation puts up a good fight when the two forces conflict. There’s also no guarantee that Mitchell and Ellie are back there—and if they are, that she’ll be in any position to help them. She’s about to charge ahead anyway when a hulk of man bursts from the alley’s shadows. That balk might have saved her life.

  “HELP!” she bellows with lung-busting force. Many keymasters are still milling about—and her shout rings out like an air raid siren, drawing at least twenty eyewitnesses as the slight, sweet woman they all just serenaded is felled by a lightning-quick brute bursting out of the darkness! It looks like a heinous crime out of a cop show (and/or a long-ago decade), and the hipster horde hesitates, but only briefly. Then it swarms, prying Danna’s assailant from her. Figuring the guy might be carrying some kind of badge (and that the alley’s probably clear now) Danna charges toward the police lights before her attacker can turn the crowd against her.

  Mitchell and Ellie are just a few rungs down the fire escape when the crowd spots them. “Here comes the bride!” they chant. “Here! She! Comes!”

  This is so unexpected, and the crowd’s relieving friendliness so welcome, that Ellie can’t help but laugh and wish she had a bouquet to toss them. “Phluttr really is on our side,” she pants to Mitchell, as they clatter down the steps.

  “Speed up and don’t look behind you,” is all he says. Raised in the church and on Blockbuster, Ellie knows all about Lot’s wife and the big-titted blondes in the horror flicks. So she rockets down the steps, her eyes obediently locked on the ground. She can now both hear and feel someone huge and agile clanging down behind them—as if he’s clearing entire floors in single leaps, like a parkour champ. The fire escape shudders, and the crowd cheers like fans at a race, perhaps expecting this very development.

  At last she reaches the ground, Mitchell looming protectively behind her, and the crowd parts, clearing a path to the right, which they both follow, unquestioning. The crowd then seals behind them, like a biblical sea cutting off Pharaoh’s army! Three athletic members of the flash mob stand just ahead, waving frantically, like third-base coaches urging a mad dash to home plate. Not far beyond them, squad cars and a few milling cops block the tiny access road.

  “This way!” a flash mobster screams, pointing them toward the police.

  “You’re gonna make it!” hollers another.

  Mitchell and Ellie reach the waving trio, and now they’re all running together, the laughing strangers ringing them protectively like a football formation. Behind them, the main body of the crowd has bottled up their pursuer at the base of the fire escape. Chanting and laughing, they’re demanding autographs and taking copious photos.

  The cops seem to be expecting all of this as Mitchell and Ellie close in at a dead run. Then moments before they arrive, a sergeant flings wide the door of the nearest patrol car, while two burly colleagues step forward to cuff them and hurl them into the backseat.

  “What the hell?” one of the runners protests. This apparently wasn’t in the flash mob’s script. But nor are Ellie and Mitchell anymore. They’re now in the cop script—as well as in Phluttr’s script, which they never once left.

  Soon, Danna is many blocks away, still running. She takes random turns, sticking to the narrow streets that pierce the TransMission’s main grid like a sublattice. A few minutes back, she emerged from that alley in time to see the flash mob pin down the near twin of the guy who almost grabbed her—even as the cops arrested Mitchell and Ellie! So what is it, then? Cops vs. Authority vs. Mitchell & Ellie vs. Phluttr vs….? Is no one on anybody else’s side? Clueless about who’s on her side, Danna’s now putting all the distance she can between herself and her phone’s last GPS pulse.

  A bit farther into her run, she remembers what Phluttr said about hacking Net-connected security cameras. Dammit. This city’s bristling with those! So, is evading Phluttr hopeless? Danna shakes her head. No. She doesn’t do hopeless. If she did, she wouldn’t have seen her eighteenth birthday.

  So instead of despairing, she stops and scans her surroundings. It’s all Dumpsters, scruffy back doors, and parked cars. Not a camera in sight. Good. While Phluttr surely caught glimpses of that headlong run, Danna’s fairly confident that she’s invisible at this particular instant. Yes, she could be visible to a cleverly concealed camera. But Phluttr has to work with the hardware that happens to be lying around the urban landscape. And in midcrime districts like this, the whole point of security systems is deterrence—persuading the bad guys they’re better off breaking into your neighbor’s place than your own. So while reporters, cops, or scumbags might hide cameras in celebrity haunts, drug dens, or bedrooms, in places like the TransMission, a camera’s value stems from naked visibility.

  A fanciful startup idea picks that bizarre moment to leap to mind. Pascal’s Stagers! Danna grins despite everything (she loves her a philosophy pun, after all). Much as Realtors hire “stagers” to fill empty homes with comfy-looking furniture, this company could primp up unmonitored blocks with cheap, phony security cameras. This would fight street crime by leveraging a secular derivative of Pascal’s Wager (that cynical argument in favor of being godly just in case). Stage a neighborhood, and the local thugs will become as docile as any pious ne’er-do-well whose fear of hell keeps him on the straight and narrow! Just now, the only thing that’s stranger than this idea to Danna is its timing. But she’ll later give her subconscious huuuuuge points for dropping the seed of something brilliant on her exactly when she needed it.

  Of course, her main priority just now is staying hidden. So she continues on foot, much more slowly. When she spies a security camera, she gives it wide berth. And she’s pretty sure she sees them all before they can see her. Her keen designer’s eyes don’t miss much—especially when fueled by one of her Machiavelli-grade bouts of paranoia.

  “Your parents?” Kuba asks incredulously. “My wife and co-founder?”

  “Mitchell runs company, Ellie makes discovery,” Monika/Phluttr explains with dizzying speed. “Company plus discovery equals me; man plus woman equals me; man woman parents; me, offspring; and—”

  “Fine, that’s enough,” Kuba snaps, silencing her. Turning to Tarek, he explains, “We’ll worry about Phluttr’s take on her ontology later. If we’re all still alive.”

  “Good idea; was going to talk to Mom/Dad first; but currently unavailable; can start fixing things with you two; guess you’re kind of uncles.”

  “Start fixing things,” Kuba says. “Sounds great. Where should we start?”

  “There are currently 6,038,519 discrete problems connected to the broad intractable situation.”

  “How many?” Tarek asks.

  “It’s now up to 6,191,883 discrete problems.” The briefest of pauses, then, “6,226,412.” Then, “6,412—”

  “OK, OK. We get the point,” Kuba says. “Where do we start?”

  “Problem number 3,443,806,” Phluttr begins. “Jinghua Wong; Wong, Jinghua; greengrocer in Xujiazhai locality of Huaquiaocun Village; in Xinzhong Xiang subdivision of Tiantai Xian county; in Zhejiang Province. Has closed shop due to rumor of war received via SMS at 7:32.04398 a.m. China Standard Time; se
nder was her niece at China Unicom number 86.33084914903; her old high school classmate now works maintenance at People’s Liberation Army depot number ML-553 in—”

  “Wait, wait, wait!” Kuba says. “Phluttr, why does this matter?”

  “Problem number 3,443,806 spawned or co-spawned four other discrete problems and counting; for instance, problem 3,806,771: Xuijiazhai locality mailman Siew Pei-Tsun found Ms. Wong’s store closed while making delivery; contacted her; she relayed war rumor; he suspended deliveries and headed deeper to countryside; broadening the spreading sense of disquiet throughout Huaqiaocun Village where mail service was last suspended over nine years ago; during a local political crisis in which—”

  “Wait, Phluttr,” Kuba interjects. “Are you sure this is the most important thing for us to focus on right now?”

  “Absolutely not. Problem chosen at random. Small problems are tractable, interconnected mesh is intractable. General issue of rising disquiet throughout China is significant as it heightens tension levels in Politburo and in operational units of military, increasing odds of catastrophic mistake; ergo problem 3,443,806 fuels a feedback loop of—”

  “Phluttr, easy,” Kuba says. “Let’s start with those operational military units.”

  “OK.”

  “How many nuclear-armed bombers, missiles, and other delivery systems are currently at the highest possible level of alert?”

  “One hundred seventy-three weapons systems,” Phluttr says, without any perceptible pause. “This represents a majority of active warheads but a minority of total warheads.”