Under the Flickering Light

by Russ Linton

  Mesmerized, Knuckles took a second before patting down his pockets. He pulled out a pair of ear plugs attached to a thin cord.

  “When I’m wailing on the drums. I don’t really use them,” he tried to explain as some sort of macho apology, but M@ti had already grabbed them.

  “Perfect,” she said, tying off the eye and draping it behind her neck like an amulet.

  “Now I really am going to ask why.”

  “This is how we walk out there, unseen,” she whispered. “Should be a simple matter of collecting the eye’s incoming image and delivering it to anybody looking our way. Come on.”

  Knuckles hesitated.

  She understood. On the run for hours, she felt not just the pressure of keeping his friendship but keeping them both alive. Her parents hadn’t exactly provided a role model for emotional bonding. M@ti set her jaw and brushed her hand against his. A simple gesture but enough that Knuckles took notice.

  “Trust me. The old man’s tablet cloaks our signals. This,” she said, touching the string at her neck, “should keep them from seeing us altogether.”

  “Should?” With one eye squinted, Knuckles regarded the spot where she’d touched him and nodded.

  Before long, they had a chance to slip through the unoccupied revolving door and onto the street. The tourists were as distracted as they were, immersed in their own virtual experience of a world which they’d dismantled. What M@ti couldn’t figure out was why.

  A few blocks in and she began think her visual hack wasn’t even necessary. The AI became as tunnel-visioned and blind as any spechead when they couldn’t count on sensing the data signals which the old hacker’s device cloaked. Sight was their secondary system which these meticulously recreated streets with their blinding colors easily overwhelmed.

  Not just them. Her and Knuckles too. The replica engaged all senses. Vehicles burned real fossil fuels in greasy, invisible clouds which caused her throat to constrict. At the same time, they passed open restaurants which filled the air with delicious aromas. Between the eddies, she’d drop her guard like a drowning woman only to choke as the next taxi rumbled past.

  Knuckles moved under a steady stream of hushed and awe-filled muttering. He pointed down the street which cleaved an endless chasm of vibrant color through the night. “How far does it go?”

  M@ti swatted his hand. Disembodied hands might draw some attention. “Keep quiet and keep your arms down.”

  “How far?” he persisted. “How hasn’t anybody seen this from the outside?”

  An entire population lost in the Nexus didn’t quite explain it. Somebody had to have looked toward downtown from an upper story or logged out long enough to see the blinding glow at night. Hell, she’d made a habit of charting the skyline from her rooftop and she had no idea this existed. She stared up and toward the sky to get her bearings.

  Marquees blocked any clear view of the sky, their glow spilling into space like milky stains. Five stories up, cables ran the entire length of the block, partly concealed behind architectural quirks. At intersections, these cables snaked around corners, framing an illusion of upper stories high rises lost in the night.

  Forgetting her own advice, she pointed. “A screen. We’re under a suspended screen of some kind.”

  “M@ti...”

  Knuckles nearly yanked her arm from the socket. An AI stepped out of a brightly-lit storefront. His head turned, M@ti had little time to react as he casually took in the passing traffic and waved an arm.

  She’d already intercepted the AI’s sensory relays through TrueSight. Fingers working, swatting away menus and flicking through her options, she snatched the detached eyeball’s input and swept it in front of them like a magician’s cloak.

  Mouth open, about to call toward the street, his gaze froze in the most genuine expression of confusion she’d witnessed an AI create. He gradually lowered his hand. Hunched over, he took two cautious steps toward them.

  Two more steps and they’d collide. M@ti pressed against Knuckles to get him to back away. Slowly.

  A yellow taxi squealed to the curb and honked. The AI’s attention shifted and M@ti held her breath. One more glance and he slipped into the cab. Through the rear window, M@ti watched as the AI launched a diagnostic scanning through every line, every filament of his visual sensors as the cab pulled away.

  “He really couldn’t see us,” Knuckles said, sounding like he was trying to convince himself.

  “That was the plan,” M@ti replied with as much confidence as her shaky breath would allow.

  “I knew you were good with this hacking shit, but that’s some Wu Jen sorcery right there.”

  “Thanks.” M@ti said.

  Knuckle’s eyes wandered to the storefront. Hand-painted text swept across the window in gold and purple marking it as Carla’s Bakery. A glass counter inside was stuffed with golden breads and smoothly iced cakes.

  “Look, I’m not sure why an AI wanted fresh cannolis, but I’m starving.” Knuckles gripped at his stomach. “Could we, you know, invis ourselves in there and have a bite?”

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. Sedate music played inside. The same aromas which she’d been fighting all along their walk became too real too ignore. Her hacker’s tablet had been buzzing warnings since they stepped out of the subway. But as far as she could tell, the bakery was empty.

  “Let’s do it.”

  They’d eaten through a shelf full of pastries before a woman stepped out from the kitchen, balancing a metal tray. No robotic assembly line had rolled these flaky crusts and injected them with buttery, sugary heaven. Another tourist AI had. Working in a kitchen.

  M@ti and Knuckles sat motionless, dusted in sugar and speckled with icing, half-eaten crusts partway to their lips. She’d already prepped their camouflage. Fooling these occupied AI already felt almost too easy. Designed to take in as much information as possible in an environment which they felt they controlled completely, none of those inputs from their tourist suits had so much as a firewall. Not until you tried to penetrate the core kernel which maintained their connection did M@ti encounter resistance.

  She’d already proved that could be circumvented.

  Responses by the chef to the empty shelves cycled across M@ti’s feed. Anger. Frustration. The baker set the tray down and wrung her hands in her apron. She rushed to the entrance to check up and down the street. M@ti’s clothes stirred as the woman passed and she hoped the chassis’ sense of smell couldn’t detect her eau de sewer. Unable to find the thief, the baker filled the display in a huff and returned to the kitchen.

  M@ti and Knuckles crept out as soon as she was gone.

  “This is so weird,” she said.

  “I know, right?” Knuckles laughed, his earlier concerns forgotten. “It’s like an invisibility cloak I once got in Dungeon Delvers. People bitched so much, they nerfed the duration to only a few minutes. Sucked, but when it worked.” He gave a low whistle.

  “No, all this. AI living like people used to. All the things they’ve tried to drill into our heads not to do.

  “I don’t know.” A recessed entrance with the words SUBWAY lit up in red neon lay ahead. Knuckles peeked around the corner and grunted before continuing on. “Maybe they’re just having fun. You know that’s a thing, right?”

  The subway sign listed a number of lines M@ti recognized. She started to consider hitching a ride but saw that the corridor ended at a barricade. A part of the amusement park not yet open for business. She hurried to catch up with Knuckles who’d nearly gotten ahead of her camouflage.

  “This is their version of the Nexus? That’s what you think?” she asked. “Why not just use the actual Nexus?”

  “Are you, of all people, really asking me why they aren’t using the Nexus? What else could this be?”

  “I don’t know. They’re collecting data. As much as they can.”

  “They’re always collecting data,” Knuckles said, unimpressed. “Helps them calculate their efficiency an
d whatever.”

  “The old hacker though. He said they could read the future. It isn’t the first time I’ve heard that.”

  “They always post their projected efficiency goals. You’d know that if you ever logged on.”

  “Not productivity estimates. I think he meant like the real future,” M@ti said. Knuckles missed a step but didn’t look up. “They’ve got an entire base on Mars. I’ve seen it. They’re sending off a deep space expedition.”

  Knuckles’ brow furrowed. “You sure you aren’t mixing this up with something you saw in Space Nomad?”

  She started to argue but M@ti realized he could be right. She’d only seen the launch on video feeds. Any of that could be faked. They couldn’t fake the asteroid orbiting the moon though.

  “M@ti.” Knuckles had stopped, his mouth hanging open.

  To their left was Times Square. Images swam across buildings and played on monitors towering high above the walk. A sky blue ad promised a New Year, the bold illumination painting the surrounding buildings with mid-morning light. Soda bottles several stories tall spilled clouds of foam onto adjacent monitors. Titanic letters scrolled across a plain ticker showing variables and integers which made little sense. Slices of the past played in short clips as mysterious as ancient hieroglyphs and as real and lifelike as the antiquated technology could manage.

  “Prep your spells.” said Knuckles. “We’re definitely going there.”

  M@ti scanned the square. She couldn’t see any activity or connections. She checked the device. No alerts or warnings. The street sign read Broadway and 42nd. She’d nearly forgotten how Broadway ran through the entire city, right past her home.

  Home. Where was that anymore? Enclave 753? Columbia University? Or a narrow two story brownstone in Brooklyn which she didn't’ want to remember.

  They headed cautiously toward a tower of screens that marked the farthest end. Seen from the corner, the wall of color exuded an energy which invited them to fill the empty space. But the further they went, the deeper the quiet settled. Their steps sounded cavernous. Screens hummed. So quiet, they could hear the color change. Whites shouted, and deep purples intoned a somber dirge. Glowing walls on either side, they kept glancing over their shoulders, suddenly unable to tell how far they’d gone. Cold heat enveloped them, stagnant and unnatural.

  A clip played on what had to be the largest screen in the square. A crowd chanted in unison. The camera centered on two people, zooming closer. One was a man with a heavy build and bright blue eyes behind wire-framed glasses. The other person was bundled head to toe, their face hidden behind a low slung hoodie. Guy or girl, the two seemed to be holding gloved hands.

  M@ti could read the man’s lips: 4...3...2...1... Everybody gave the same, muted chant, their eyes fixed skyward. On “1”, the figure in the hoodie drew the man close. He surrendered apprehensively to the sudden intensity and passion combined with a notable strength. Hood askew, a metal face pressed into the man’s and he cringed, his glasses shifting to an awkward position on his face.

  All of the joy of the moment evaporated. The robot stalked away and toward the camera where the image lost focus. Behind the robot, the man tried to recover. He called out, reaching desperately and fumbling with his bent glasses. Blurred out, a metallic hand covered the camera. There was a flash. The screen went blank.

  M@ti’d seen stranger romances in the Nexus but something told her none of this was Nexus feeds. This had all happened. For real. For reasons she didn’t quite understand, it unnerved her.

  “We should leave,” she said.

  “There!” Knuckles gasped, angling toward a store.

  An impossible assortment of what, in her expert opinion, could only be called junk, filled the windows. T-shirts and mugs and bags in every color, size, and shape crowded the display from floor to ceiling. Acronyms for the city’s ancient name, NY, shouted from each pristine item, all as if they’d been made yesterday.

  M@ti stared at the dizzying wall and felt another pang of longing for her rooftop retreat. Not that she’d ever let her own collection get this out of control. The things she kept usually had a purpose. Usually.

  “What’s so amaz...?” Words caught in her throat.

  There, in the corner of the display, cleanly boxed with the square’s illumination playing on the glossy surface, was a figurine. Only this one was different from the one she’d recently found. Not an overly muscled man, this one was a woman wreathed in flame. Printed along the side were words made to look scorched and blackened:

  EMBER - AUGMENT HOTSHOT!

  16

  M@ti stood in the store on the other side of the window. Paper from this era normally crumbled to pieces in her hands, but this box felt solid enough. The plastic figure had a flawless, colorful sheen where the figure she’d found in the blocked subway tunnel had been stained and pitted. She’d cleaned it off as best as she could, but this one...this one was brand new.

  “Augment Hotshot? Like augmented reality?” Knuckles asked.

  “How’d you even see this from so far away?”

  “I didn’t see that.” Knuckles smiled and slipped into the display behind the wall of T-shirts. Chained together plastic hangers clattered. M@ti gritted her teeth and swept the store for any sign of AI. “I saw this,” Knuckles said as he emerged from behind the T-shirt wall.

  He wielded a sword, a katana, similar to the one he used in Fivefold Bushido. Though, with a plastic scabbard and a dragon-head pommel too garish to be real gold, this one was singularly unimpressive.

  “I think it’s a toy,” she said.

  He whipped the scabbard to his side and squared his shoulders. “Don’t judge me,” he playfully warned, a slight nod indicating the figure clutched in her hands.

  M@ti turned to face the interior and took in rack after rack of souvenirs and cheap mementos. Time, solar radiation, weather, all of those should have cause this to decompose or degraded after so long.

  “All this stuff,” she said, lowering the box as if about to replace it but deciding against it. “Why are they making this?”

  Knuckles dismissed the question with a huff. “Who cares?” He drew the sword in a swift, fluid arc and M@ti raised her eyebrows. A metallic ring sounded through the empty store and their eyes met, astonished. Knuckles touched the edge lightly and his face fell. “Not sharp,” he said, sawing at his forearm to illustrate.

  “Here we are, banned, because I broke one rule and the Collective has been breaking their own rules for who knows how long. All of this is trash. Toxic. Recyclable.”

  Knuckles sheathed his weapon and wandered toward a shelf. “Maybe this is a collection point. You know, for the digitization archives.”

  “No. No.” She said it twice to make sure it sunk in. “It’s too new. The tourist’s clothes, the jobs, the painstaking recreation, all while hiding this from the rest of the Preserve with their screen and re-routed hovs. They’re pretending to be human.”

  Anger surged in her chest and her cheeks flushed. She’d been on the receiving end of that experiment once before. Where did they get off collecting, making, all these things while she performed subway enemas to scrounge up hers? She’d risked her own ass to find what little she had and here they piled it all up in the open. She’d given up her life, her private aerie, and been labeled a criminal for much less.

  Knuckles moved closer. “Are you okay?”

  She whipped away. “Why aren’t you more angry? You’re banned. No more samurai games or punk concerts. We still don’t know what happened to Harriet, Harlock, and Tragic. You should hate them for this!”

  Them. Hate them. Not me, she thought. This is their doing.

  “M@ti,” he said quietly, hanging his head. “I’m trying to grock all this the best I can.” He gestured toward the store and the city outside. “I go to the Nexus and I can be anyone, do anything.” His hands reached for his missing specs. “I don’t know if that’s wrong or whatever, but it is...was my life. More real than whatever’s going on
here. Maybe it was wrong. Maybe this is wrong. But the Collective gave me something.”

  “Lies,” she hissed, brushing past him.

  She was angry, at him, her parents, the whole system. She couldn’t expect a spechead to ever understand. Alone, that’s what she’d always been. Why would that ever change?

  Behind her, Knuckles released an exasperated sigh. “Wanna know why I decided to play the drums?” Still unable to face him, M@ti shook her head. “Because, in the Nexus, they had the tightest algorithms of any instrument. I mean, if you play them there, really learn how, you can play them out here. Lockpicking? Same.”

  She turned to watch him dice up an invisible foe with the sword. M@ti had no way to judge the swings aside from the confidence on his face but she rolled her eyes anyway. “So you’re a master swordsman too then?”

  He took another swing, this one a little off balance. “Could be. This isn’t a skill I practiced much on the outside. Point is, the Nexus gave me a purpose.”

  M@ti’s anger started to subside. She recalled his concerts. Showing up to gawk in the flesh, she understood his skill. Of all the music she could will into the cavities of her skull through bone conducting implants, only his, in the real world, made her feel alive.

  “I already knew that about you,” she said softly. “That’s the only reason I could put up with you.”

  “Not a regular thing, huh?” he asked, sheathing the sword once more. “You putting up with people.”

  She wandered to a rack and dragged her fingers through a display of lockets and chains. This was more truth than she needed to hear. Even from someone who maybe wasn’t a complete spechead. But she felt ready to share a truth of her own.

  “I was raised by tourists. AI in fancy skins.”

  M@ti didn’t need to be looking to feel the shock spread through him. Air stilled, the swish of the cheap sword stopped, and she wondered if she weren’t actually alone this time for good. She embraced the possibility he’d walked away and let her eyes lose focus, so she could finish telling the story she’d never shared.