The London Project (Portal Book 1)

by Mark J Maxwell

  Louisa ignored the pleas, quietly humming to herself until the yelling died down. Jess was only partly correct. The kids did have Portal access rights enshrined in law by the CSCA, but it also detailed supervisory powers over minors, including a time-out of ten minutes a day for frustrated parents. It was ideal for getting their attention. She activated VANS and turned to look at the kids.

  ‘You know the deal.’ She tried not to smile at their comically sullen faces glaring back at her. ‘We’re going to have a nice family conversation first. Then you can get back your screens.’

  ‘Whatever.’ Jess folded her arms and looked out the window. A futile attempt to show disinterest because the side windows had darkened so she couldn’t see outside.

  ‘How was your weekend?’ Louisa asked. ‘Did you do anything nice with your father?’

  ‘Abigail reached a hundred thousand feeders on her profile,’ Charlie said. ‘It was so cool! She’s got level seven access now and she gifted me one of the level’s games for twelve hours.’ He turned his terminal screen towards her where his game was paused. ‘I’ve only got a few hours left though.’ He gave her his best forlorn look.

  ‘She sure is a popular woman.’ Louisa tried not to let her dislike of Abigail come through in her tone. She hated the term ‘feeder’. It sounded like some sort of parasite sucking the blood from its host.

  Portal used a system for restricting access to some of their free services based on Portal credits. The only way to obtain the credits was by sharing out more and more of your profile data via feeds. As your credits grew you were allowed to access things like alternative profile skins, games, music and screencasts. The restricted services were divided into levels. It was a bit like a role playing game where your character’s experience points defined what level they were at. Louisa often wondered why the government had bothered legislating for privacy rights—Londoners seemed more than happy to share their data out publicly in exchange for early access to some vapid screencast drama.

  ‘She’s such a feed whore,’ Jess said.

  ‘Jessica Bennett we don’t allow that sort of language in this family,’ Louisa said. Charlie was grinning, no doubt storing the term away for future use. ‘And that includes you too, Charles. It’s not funny. I don’t want you repeating it.’

  ‘It’s true!’ Jess protested. ‘She shares out her perception feed. Creepy or what? Never mind she permanently shares her location and browsing feeds. She even shares first-person feeds sometimes.’

  ‘Not when you two are visiting, surely?’ Louisa didn’t want footage of Jess and Charlie shared out amongst Abigail’s subscribers. God knows who they all were.

  ‘No, but she wanted to. I heard her and Dad arguing about it. Her feeders only sky-rocketed because Dad’s representing Kantrell Heuston anyway.’

  Nice to know there’s trouble in paradise. ‘The name sounds familiar. Is he famous?’

  ‘You’re so vacant, Mom,’ Jess said. ‘He’s one of the biggest screencast stars. He’s getting sued by one of his feeders because he cut off his perception feed. They’re claiming their access rights have been violated or something.’

  ‘Can I share my perception feed, Mom?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘No you certainly cannot,’ Louisa said, horrified by the thought of Charlie’s feelings and emotions being broadcast amongst his friends. Even if it was Portal’s approximations of what they were.

  ‘But it would triple my credits multiplier if I did. Everyone knows you get loads more subscriber requests when you share your perception feed. I might even get to level three if I do, and there’s this game on level three that’s supposed to be really good.’

  ‘At your age, the only subscribers you have should be your close friends,’ Louisa said. ‘When you’re fourteen like your sister then you can approve who you want but up until then they have to go through me.’

  ‘Five years! That’s like, forever!’

  ‘Yes, well, it’s the law. When you’re a bit older you’ll realise what it means to give a piece of yourself away.’ Louisa was suddenly tired of the conversation. She rubbed her temples, feeling as though a migraine was starting to come on. She got them infrequently and they always began with a wave of fatigue and a piercing whine.

  Louisa frowned. The noise wasn’t only in her head. It seemed to be coming from the car, and it was getting louder.

  ‘Mom?’ Jess had a puzzled expression on her face. She pointed past Louisa. ‘Something’s up with the car.’

  Black vertical lines flickered back and forth across the windscreen. The normally crisp text of the driving summary was pixelated and the letters were being replaced by seemingly random characters and symbols. The dashboard was suffering from the same visual distortion.

  ‘That’s strange,’ Louisa said, then winced as the whine changed to a high-pitched squeal. It was actually painful to listen to. Louisa tapped the dashboard a couple of times but it was frozen. Abruptly the noise ceased and the dashboard went dark.

  ‘Mom!’ Jess cried out.

  Louisa looked up. The windscreen had cleared. It took a split second for Louisa to realise the vehicle was back under manual control, and they were heading at speed straight for a row of parked cars.

  A voice inside her head screamed a warning, but instead of surging panic a calmness descended and seeped into to her bones. We’re going to crash. The thought bubbled up to the surface of her awareness. She slammed her foot on the brake and pulled hard on the steering wheel. Her stomach lurched as the world spun away. The car tyres squealed and over the awful noise she heard Jess screaming, on and on for what seemed like an age, before the car came to a final thudding, shuddering stop.

  Louisa’s chest heaved as she sucked in deep lungfuls of air. Her fingers were clenched into white-knuckled fists around the steering wheel. It took all of her concentration to make them relax and unclamp.

  She blinked as awareness of her surroundings slammed back into her. Did I hit anything? Ahead the road was clear. She checked the mirrors but there was no sign they had collided with another car or a pedestrian. Outside the driver’s-side window a parked car was mere inches away. They had somehow managed to stop before they slid into it.

  Louisa twisted in her seat to look at Jess and Charlie. ‘Are you all right?’ They nodded, visibly shaken but otherwise none the worse for wear.

  She saw through the rear window that a car had pulled up. The other car’s windows were darkened so she couldn’t see the occupants. If they had VANS activated they were probably unaware she was blocking their way. She heard a pinging noise from the dashboard and saw an alert bubble had appeared from the other car saying ‘Please remove obstruction’.

  What the hell had happened? VANS was supposed to bring the car to a gentle stop if it ever lost its connection with the Traffic Subnet.

  Louisa shook her head. She could log a bug report in the morning and let Portal worry about it. Right now she needed to get the kids home. She tapped the engine start icon on the dashboard. VANS kicked in and displayed a suggested route back home. She disengaged it with a sharp tap. Bugger that. So much for VANS offering a safer driving experience.

  ‘Can we have our Portal access back now?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ Louisa said. At least Charlie hadn’t been upset by the near miss.

  ‘I forgot to ask, are you guys hungry? We can stop for take-out on the way…’ Louisa trailed off as she looked in the mirror and saw their glazed expressions. They were paying her no attention.

  A warning chimed and she realised she was driving well over the speed limit. She slowed down and tried to relax, admitting to herself she was still wired after the near miss.

  When she stopped at the next set of traffic lights she glanced at the other cars. All the windows were opaque, the drivers likely on a call, browsing Portal, or watching a screencast, passing the time until they were delivered home. Louisa used to hate driving in London with its awful traffic and frequently rude and aggressive drivers. It ha
d been a generally unpleasant experience. Now though, she had to admit, it was kind of boring. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been on the receiving end of an obscene gesture or shouted at by some irate driver.

  At a junction near her apartment block she finally saw someone driving manually. It was an elderly man in an old battered Ford. From the car’s age she suspected it had been retro-fitted with a Portal interface. He saw her staring and gave her a wave. She smiled and waved back. She was suddenly struck by how odd it seemed to be acknowledging a stranger in that way. It seemed silly to think about it but she missed the rapidly disappearing day-to-day human interactions. Small things, like bumping into a neighbour when you were checking your post, or passing the time of day with someone in the checkout queue at a supermarket. When had she last been to a supermarket anyway? All her groceries were tagged and when she ran out they were restocked in a twice-weekly delivery. Weekend shopping trips for household items were a thing of the past. The Portal Replication Unit in her kitchen was capable of manufacturing anything from cups and plates to toasters and kettles. The basic designs for the items were freely available on Portal’s store extension. Louisa couldn’t remember the last time she received a real letter, either. Come to think of it, she didn’t know if her apartment block even had letterboxes.

  It left Louisa melancholy as she drove the rest of the way home. The feeling persisted as she parked the car and took the lift up to her apartment, not passing a single person on the way.

  At Portal’s launch the project had been hailed as the natural successor to the global web. Not just a range of free to use services across an ultra fast and high bandwidth city network, but a marked change in the way Londoners would live their lives. Large-scale social change rarely happened overnight and Portal had proven to be no exception. The permeation was gradual, but relentless. Casual interest in new and updated services quickly became a dependency. The hunger for the latest innovations surprising even those who had predicted a substantial Portal uptake amongst the population. Portal had been sold to London’s residents as the world’s biggest experiment to bring people closer together.

  Why then, have I never felt more alone?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ‘No terminals at the dinner table, Jess.’ Louisa held out her hand. ‘Now put it away or hand it over.’

  ‘Dad doesn’t mind.’ Jess turned off the screen. ‘When we’re at his place we can use them whenever.’

  Louisa had heard the protest before. ‘And what did you talk about with your father during dinner?’

  ‘Well, nothing.’

  ‘My point exactly. Besides, you’ll be using it all day tomorrow at school. You should have at least five minutes every day when you’re not glued to the thing.’

  ‘It’s not the same. They make you connect to the school’s subnet and it restricts access to boring educational extensions.’

  ‘Jimmy Coughlan can get regular access in school,’ Charlie said, around a mouthful of pizza.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Jess said.

  ‘He can too. He installed a hacked extension to get around the school’s network filter.’

  ‘Does Jimmy Coughlan know what he did breached Portal’s terms of usage?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Charlie replied, ‘but loads of kids in school have done it.’

  ‘And does he also know that if he corrupts his profile he’ll have to pay for Portal to recover it?’

  ‘Oh.’ Charlie appeared suitably chastened. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Mum,’ Jess said, ‘a few of the girls are heading into town after school tomorrow. Is it okay if I go along?’

  ‘Sorry, Jess,’ Louisa said, ‘Charlie needs to be picked up after school and I can’t make it back from work in time.’

  ‘Why can’t he make his own way?’

  ‘Because he’s too young. Maybe in a few years he’ll be fine to manage by himself but until then I need you to bring him home, the same as always.’

  Jess scowled at Charlie who grinned in response. He fished his terminal out of his pocket. He’d changed the back of the device to a cartoon face from one of his manga screencasts. He pinched the corners and expanded the terminal. As he did so the cartoon grew to almost life-size proportions and while the device was still flexible Charlie held it up and pressed his face into the screen. The cartoon face distorted as it took on the shape of his head. He stuck his tongue into the device and wiggled it. ‘Blaaah!’ The cartoon face replicated his actions, its bright red tongue bulging grotesquely.

  ‘You’re such a baby!’ Jess stormed off to her bedroom.

  Louisa winced as Jess slammed the door. ‘Charlie, stop. Where did you even learn to do that anyway?’

  He lowered the terminal. ‘Jimmy showed me.’

  Louisa frowned at him. ‘I think you’ve been spending a bit too much time with Jimmy Coughlan.’

  Jess’ mood was always sour after spending the weekend at her father’s. The house was a mansion compared to the two-bed apartment Louisa shared with the kids. It didn’t help when Jess had her own room at John’s but at home she had to share with Charlie. Arguments about her getting her own room invariably flared up after the weekend visits. The fact that Louisa privately agreed with her daughter certainly didn’t help with the guilt. Jess deserved to have some space to call her own. Life at fourteen was hard enough without sharing your bedroom with a little brother.

  Jess was lying on her bed listening to music and engrossed in her terminal when Louisa stuck her head in. Louisa could hear the tinny noise leaking from Jess’ ear buds. Louisa had stopped trying to keep track of whatever band was currently in vogue with Jess and her friends. Mainly because she found it hard to distinguish between them all. The songs they listened to were mathematical compositions generated by Portal. Each band was actually a tweaked version of an algorithm Portal created by deconstructing historic hit-records.

  Whatever she was listening to, it wasn’t helping to calm her down. Jess was still fuming. She’d activated an extension that displayed different visuals on the back of her terminal depending on her mood. It was popular with teenagers who used it to share their feelings amongst friends, flirt with boys, that sort of thing. This one had a weather theme and its current form was a roiling mass of dark clouds, illuminated occasionally by flashes of lightning.

  Louisa resisted the urge to ask Jess if she’d checked her blood sugar levels. Jess was diabetic and crankiness was one of the first signs her levels were dipping. But she was a teenager after all. She didn’t need low blood sugar levels to be in a foul mood. And anyway, since Jess received the subcutaneous implant that monitored her blood chemistry she rarely became hypoglycaemic. It was integrated with her profile and she received a warning when she needed an insulin injection or a glucose boost.

  ‘What is it, Mum?’ Jess asked, not looking upon from her screen.

  ‘It won’t be like this forever.’ Louisa sat beside her daughter. ‘I simply can’t afford a bigger place at the moment.’ It was the truth. Louisa would move in a heartbeat if she could. She’d been with the MET for nearly ten years but lower police budgets meant lower pay scales. Given the amount of layoffs over the last few years she counted herself lucky to still have a job. And she did want to remain on the force. She didn’t want to go into private security consultancy like so many of her fellow officers. She’d thought about transferring out of London to a different police force up North, but it wouldn’t be fair on the kids to take them away from their father. Besides, she’d be breaching the terms of the divorce and she guessed John wouldn’t exactly be open to changing them. He’d probably drag her into court if she even mentioned the idea.

  ‘Yeah, I know, Mum. It’s okay.’ The terminal’s storm clouds lightened to grey.

  ‘We didn’t get a chance to speak before you went to your father’s on Friday. How are things in school?’

  Jess shrugged. ‘The usual school stuff.’

  ‘Anything new with your friends?
’ Louisa asked, then smiled. ‘Any boys you’re interested in?’

  ‘No, Mum,’ Jess squirmed uncomfortably. The clouds took on a pinkish hue. ‘Please, I don’t want to talk about that stuff.’

  ‘I could use my special police powers if I wanted to.’ Louisa waved her fingers mysteriously. ‘I could access your profile and see what you’re up to.’

  ‘You wouldn’t dare!’ Her cloudscape turned a dark purple in a mixture of alarm and embarrassment.

  Louisa couldn’t help but laugh at Jess’ expression. She couldn’t look at her daughter’s profile, even if she was her mother. She gently stroked Jess’ cheek. ‘Of course I wouldn’t. Just as long as you’re careful. You can talk to me about anything, you know? Like old times.’

  ‘Sure, Mum.’

  Back in the kitchen Charlie was nodding into his pizza. Louisa bundled him off to bed, ignoring his protests. Later, she checked on the kids and found them both sound asleep. The glow of Charlie’s terminal shone through the duvet. She retrieved it carefully so as not to wake him. It deactivated as she picked it up, recognising she wasn’t its owner, and she set it on the nightstand. He’d be upset in the morning if the device was dead before he went to school. It would regain battery power overnight. Ambient energy harvesting provided enough power to charge up the graphene supercapacitors as long as it was switched off.

  Louisa went to the kitchen to pour a glass of wine. The bin held the dregs of the two bottles she’d consumed on Friday night, alone with the living room screen for company. The apartment was tiny, really, with a combined living room and kitchenette the only other space apart from the bedrooms. It was inevitable they’d drive each other a little crazy from time to time, being so cooped up together. The funny thing was, although Louisa always craved solitude when it was time for the kids’ fortnightly visit to their father’s, the apartment was so devoid of life when they left. It was all so different now they were back. Even asleep in their beds their presence made the apartment feel less oppressive.