Connect

by Julian Gough

  They’re learning.

  And now we can’t see them.

  101

  Ryan’s doing all he can to direct the targeting, while he still has some access to the immune system; it’s already disengaging from his control, closing down the testing software, going fully autonomous.

  He gets the testing software to report to him, just before it’s shut down.

  They’ve made it onto a bus? Damn . . .

  And the immune system has decided Naomi and Colt are only a Level 1 threat. Yellow? Oh, for fuck’s sake . . .

  It’s not taking the risk seriously enough yet.

  On yellow, the system won’t risk collateral damage. Second level, orange, it can risk some small number of civilian deaths. Third-level response, red – it doesn’t care how many it kills, as long as it gets its target.

  So . . . how can I get it up to orange, before it goes fully autonomous? To red?

  He’s trying to persuade the system to kill his wife and child. And everyone else on the bus.

  He very deliberately doesn’t think about that.

  This is a technical problem. Don’t get emotional. The long-term safety of the country is at stake here.

  Personal stuff doesn’t matter.

  There’s one input channel still open. He pumps the system full of data about high-risk individuals. About the disproportionate consequences of a military breakthrough being shared with an enemy.

  The system digests the information. Does a threat audit. Pushes the threat level up a notch, to orange.

  One more push . . . Get it up to red.

  Ryan tries to manipulate the data stacks, cautiously, before he loses access.

  There’s too much bullshit United Nations peacekeeping data; it’s making the entire system reluctant to shoot. He’d argued against it at the Senate committee, but they’d pushed it in to appease some loudmouth Democrats back in the House, who’d never seen service, or had to deal with the consequences of their programmes in the real world.

  He downgrades the weighting the system should give to UN reports.

  He pushes it too far. Triggers an alert, for interfering with the data.

  The system locks him out. And now he’s blind.

  Now it’s autonomous.

  There is no more he can do.

  It might have worked. It might not.

  If it worked . . . his country will, very soon, be safe. And his wife and child will be dead.

  102

  The bus moves through the outskirts of Las Vegas.

  It stops abruptly outside a shabby hotel, and Colt catches movement from the corner of his eye. He jerks around in his seat, in time to see a shadowy side door finish swinging open; two women run out, both waving at the bus.

  A middle-aged Asian woman, Filipina maybe, and a young Han Chinese woman with unusually braided hair. The young woman’s hair, the shape of her head, sets off some odd association in Colt’s new neurons so that for a moment he tastes pineapple.

  ‘Ladies, no hurry,’ calls the driver, ‘we ain’t going nowhere,’ and they slow to a trot. Climb aboard.

  ‘Thank you, Michael,’ says the middle-aged woman.

  ‘Appreciate it,’ says the younger woman.

  ‘No problem, ladies.’

  They sit in front of Naomi and Colt.

  The middle-aged woman takes a large purple plastic object out of her bag, and shows it to the younger woman.

  It’s shaped like an erect penis, veins and all.

  ‘Found it in the dustbin.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Don’t act blur leh. I always look in the big dustbin, upstairs. Always. Two or three time a day.’

  Blur . . . And dustbin . . . Not Philippines, thinks Colt. Singapore. Singlish.

  ‘The orange one,’ says the younger woman, ‘or the . . .’

  ‘Yah, orange. The guests always throw all kinds of things in there one. Stuff they don’t take home to their wives. Batteries not bad also.’ She switches it on, and it buzzes.

  ‘You sell it, or use it?’

  The older woman studies the vibrating penis. ‘Maybe use it. I don’t know. Aiyah, it’s been so long, I think this thing too big for me already. I’m like a little girl again lor.’

  ‘Like a virgin . . .’ The younger woman starts singing, laughing.

  ‘Yah, yah.’ The older woman laughs too. ‘I’m a virgin again, like Madonna.’

  Colt wonders, which Madonna? The mother of Jesus, or the old pop star?

  It seems obvious to them, but it isn’t to him.

  He worries away at the sentence, but there is no way in, no way to crack the meaning open.

  What she said is only a translation of what she thought, in her head. And he can’t get into her head.

  It’s crazy, that computers can read each other’s minds perfectly, with no loss of data quality, but people are totally cut off from each other.

  He looks at his mother. She’s sleeping. He studies her face. Her surface.

  Oh, Mama.

  They are approaching the Strip.

  He touches Naomi on the shoulder. She jerks awake.

  ‘The best chance to shake off the drones will be in the casinos,’ says Colt. ‘The biggest crowds; lots of random circulation. Indoors, so they can’t follow, and lots of exits.’

  Through the bus window, he can see the individuals on the sidewalk are increasing in number; soon they will form a crowd thick enough to hide in. He looks back at Naomi, who is still rubbing her eyes.

  ‘Very hard for them to track us through a casino,’ he says. ‘And I’m pretty sure they can’t strike, too many civilians.’

  ‘But . . . can they recognize us?’ says Naomi.

  Colt shrugs. ‘Standard pattern recognition. Face, dress, proportions. If we buy new T-shirts, change our hair, our walk, split up for a while, keep our faces down, stay in crowds, we should be OK.’

  Naomi nods. Stands up, stretches. Steps into the aisle and walks up to the driver.

  He is reading an old-fashioned paper book, The Power of Now, while glancing absently up through the windscreen every few seconds, to check if anyone’s waving at the bus.

  Ah, that explains the human driver, she thinks. This bus stops for illegals, living off-grid. Can’t risk flagging down a bus electronically.

  She hesitates, reluctant to interrupt him. The driver snorts at a sentence. Naomi studies the muscles of the arm holding the book.

  The bus slows for a moment, abruptly, and everyone sways forward. Naomi grabs the pillar behind the driver to stop herself falling, and sees the jay-runner sprint by – a young white guy covering his face with his hands – right under the nose of the bus.

  The bus apologetically, carefully, returns to normal speed as soon as he’s clear.

  The jay-runner crosses the six lanes, as the cars and buses all automatically slow and swerve around him.

  Crazy. Some California tourist, no doubt, who’s forgotten that Nevada cars aren’t all self-drive, with automatic safeties.

  ‘Fool,’ says the driver, mildly, looking up from his book.

  Guess he sees a lot of it.

  He notices Naomi. ‘Mmmm?’

  ‘Sorry . . . do you go down the Strip?’

  ‘Sure, lady. Where you think all these characters are going to work? The Vatican? Hey, I got your change, gimme a second . . .’

  As the bus turns right, down Las Vegas Boulevard South, and they sway, he scoops some notes and coins out of his shirt pocket.

  Naomi takes them. ‘Thank you.’ Returns to her seat.

  *

  Colt stares out the window at the Strip. He hardly notices his mother’s return.

  Neon lights, he thinks . . . Mostly not neon, though. A lot of LEDs, and mercury vapour tubes. Krypton tubes. Their phosphor coatings glow in pastel shades. But yeah, there are some old-style glass tubes still, with a noble gas, inert, aloof. Not wanting to react, but forced by electricity to glow. Red neon. The creamy peach of helium. There’s some blue;
xenon. A sad blue? A sky blue?

  He puzzles over how it makes him feel. He puzzles over the fact that it makes him feel. Everything connecting, rewiring . . .

  He imagines his brain glowing a hot red, like an excited neon tube. No longer inert, aloof. Electrified. Incandescent.

  Don’t get lost in your thoughts. Focus.

  He turns to face Naomi.

  ‘We have to get straight into the casino, fast,’ he says. ‘The more the drones observe us in movement, the more easily the drones can identify us later.’

  ‘Should we change our clothes . . .’ Naomi looks around the bus helplessly. Change into what?

  ‘Not yet,’ says Colt, and she’s relieved. ‘No point trying to fool them we’re somebody else while we get off the bus. They’ve seen everyone getting on and getting off, there’s a tiny dataset of possibilities. We have a much better chance of shaking them when we leave the casino. Massive dataset. Huge probability space. We’ll change our look then . . . That one,’ says Colt, pointing out the window.

  ‘New York, New York,’ says Naomi. ‘OK.’

  The bus stops.

  Naomi walks past the driver, who is sighing over his book, and steps down off the bus. She glances up, looking for the drones. ‘Sorry,’ she says to Colt, lowering her gaze. She hadn’t seen them. Hadn’t even seen the sky; just a dazzle of spilled light.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he says. ‘We want them to get some footage. We want them to know it’s us. But disguise your walk.’

  ‘How?’ says Naomi.

  ‘Keep one leg stiff. And hunch a little. It’ll mess with their data.’

  They walk with quick, stiff steps into the enormous welcoming mouth of the casino.

  103

  Briskly, through the crowds.

  It opens up.

  The space is so large. Colt checks, over his shoulder, repeatedly, that a small drone hasn’t followed them in.

  Beneath their feet, steam abruptly puffs from under a fake manhole in the fake street.

  Colt sniffs. Dry, ticklish. Not steam.

  Dry ice.

  CO2.

  They walk on, towards a fake Times Square. The noise around them is loud but strangely muffled, its sharper edges blunted by the carpet between the slot machines, in the darker spaces off to either side.

  They pass the low-stakes blackjack tables. At one, a small, swaying man is shouting at a topless female robot dealer, who smiles back at him as she rakes in his money. Colt’s helmet autotranslates the swearing from Russian, and Colt blushes.

  They pass an oasis of light; the high-stakes blackjack tables, with human dealers, in their white gloves, dealing.

  When Naomi closes her eyes against the light and sound and movement, she sees the real Times Square, hears the real sounds of New York. She feels, for a second, in memory, the cock of the man in the Times Square hotel, whose name she can’t recall. Oh . . . She pushes her tongue, hard, into her cheek.

  She opens her eyes.

  There’s a kiosk selling T-shirts.

  ‘Let’s change,’ says Colt.

  Naomi pulls out her credit card.

  ‘No,’ Colt says. ‘Your cards will be on an alert list by now. Use that, and you’ve described our new outfits for them.’

  She puts away the card. Buys two T-shirts for cash.

  Colt asks the guy for a plastic bag, to carry them.

  Naomi heads for the bathroom, but Colt takes her arm, swings her back into a gloomy aisle of slots.

  ‘The bathrooms are a funnel point,’ he says. ‘They’ll assume we’ll pass through there, at some stage. If they’re coordinating with people on the ground . . .’

  ‘Where will we change, then? Here?’

  ‘They can’t see us, I’m pretty sure.’

  ‘But . . . there’s cameras everywhere. What if they can . . .’

  ‘Mama, it’s a casino.’ And Colt grins a real grin. ‘The cameras are closed-circuit. Airgapped. Like bank cameras.’

  Naomi glances up at a camera, looks away. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Certain. Not broadcast, not online. But, yeah, just in case . . .’

  They walk between the rows of slot machines, deeper into the glowing, pulsing dark, until they find an unattended row.

  Colt drapes his new T-shirt over a retro slot-machine handle, while he pulls off his old top.

  Naomi pauses in her own changing, and studies his perfect body, his wounded hand, in the pulsing golden light of a bank of Goldmine slots.

  He will die. One day he will die. No matter what I do.

  Her eyes sting and burn.

  ‘What?’ says Colt.

  ‘Dry ice,’ says Naomi, and rubs her eyes. ‘Shall we keep our old clothes?’

  ‘Yes. Hide them and your handbag. Use their plastic bag. And mess up your hair. Break up the patterns.’

  She ties her hair back in a bun.

  ‘Yeah, good.’

  ‘Your hand,’ she says. ‘We should hide your hand.’

  ‘I’ll keep it in my pocket.’ He demonstrates.

  ‘No, it looks wrong. It looks like you’re carrying a gun, or, I don’t know, hiding something. And you’ll have to use your hand sometimes.’

  ‘OK.’ Colt thinks. Patterns, patterns . . . ‘Wait . . . I saw something . . . Stay here.’

  Colt walks back to the oasis of light. There. Still there. Draped over the rim of a trashcan. A pair of white disposable dealer’s gloves.

  Colt snorts. Ridiculous, that dealers have to wear gloves now, too. Nobody’s ever been killed by a bio-weapon spread by cards in a casino. Dumb law . . .

  As he walks back to his mother, he shoves the left glove in his pocket, and carefully pulls the other thin, flexible white glove onto his damaged hand.

  His mother laughs when he arrives.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You look like Michael Jackson. Put on the other one.’

  He does. She laughs again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry . . . Now you look like Mickey Mouse.’

  ‘Is that bad?’ says Colt, frowning at the gloves.

  ‘No, Colt. It’s fine.’

  ‘OK, we should leave separately,’ says Colt. ‘I’ll go first.’

  ‘No!’ says Naomi.

  A vivid image of Colt walking out ahead of her, and dying in front of her, an orange blast, then white, like looking into the sun; and for ever gone.

  ‘But we have to leave separately,’ says Colt. ‘They’ll recognize—’

  ‘I’m your mother,’ says Naomi. ‘I’ll go first, alone, and see if they . . . Follow me. If they don’t . . . I’ll come back for you.’

  ‘Mama . . .’

  ‘We’ll leave separately. Don’t worry. After I’ve tested, is it safe.’

  She moves towards the exit.

  ‘Change your walk,’ says Colt, from behind her. ‘Try slightly shorter steps. It looks natural, but it alters all your movements.’

  Naomi nods, without turning.

  ‘And from now on, don’t look up at the drones,’ he says. ‘No matter what. They’re looking for someone who knows they’re being chased, so it’s a total giveaway. I should be able to see from here if they follow you. But don’t look up.’

  She walks out of the casino into the sharp light, the dry heat. The short steps make her absurdly conscious of her hips. A man looks her straight in the eye, and she smiles.

  She could die at any moment.

  She feels a wave of exultation; pure energy. As it surges through her, it’s hard not to stride, like she did when she first became a woman, and felt the anger and power and terror and pleasure and embarrassment of being looked at. But she walks, walks carefully, making eye contact with people as they pass, because that distracts her from looking up.

  Everything is so vivid in the sunlight. It must be the suppressed energy, but nearly everyone she makes eye contact with smiles, some of them abruptly, like they’ve just woken, and she realizes she is grinning.

  A man in his thi
rties is moving towards her, fast, swaying. He meets her eyes, but he doesn’t smile. It’s like he hasn’t really seen her.

  As he passes, his shoulder strikes hers, hard. She is half spun around, and gasps at the shock of having the man crash into her personal space, into her.

  Secret Service? Undercover cop?

  She tenses for the fight.

  But he doesn’t acknowledge the strike at all, keeps moving, as she looks around for others. Are they arresting me? But there are no others.

  Then he stops, and turns to face the tall, loose chain-link fence running beside them. A building site beyond.

  The man’s profile reminds her, distractingly, of her mother’s favourite film star, Chow Yun Fat, back when he was young and handsome.

  He grabs hold of the chain link, either side of a concrete support, so that the fence rattles and jangles and pulls abruptly tight beside Naomi, and he slams his forehead against the concrete post, the fence, and she sees the curved marks of the wire fence on his forehead and that he is weeping.

  Oh. He’s at the centre of his own drama; he’s not part of mine at all.

  Just another guy who’s lost everything.

  Naomi turns away and walks on.

  She walks as far as Bellagio’s, walks inside. Leans against a wall for a minute to let her heart slow down.

  Walks back out again.

  Back to New York, New York. Back to Colt.

  Don’t look up.

  Like Lot’s wife, leaving the city of Sodom.

  Waiting for an angry God to turn her into a pillar of salt.

  104

  ‘Was I seen?’ says Naomi, when she’s safely back inside.

  ‘Of course you were seen—’ says Colt.

  ‘Colt!’

  ‘—The one at fifteen thousand feet is probably covering half of Las Vegas. But I’m pretty sure you weren’t identified.’

  ‘Jesus, Colt, don’t scare me like that.’

  But she sees from his face he hadn’t meant to; he was just answering literally. She shivers as the perspiration from her walk outside evaporates in the air conditioning.

  He’s answered her question. She asks it again anyway, just to hear it stated more firmly, ‘The little ones, the facial-recognition ones. Did they follow me?’

  ‘No sign of them following you. But we should keep our heads down.’

  ‘Baseball caps,’ says Naomi. ‘Shade our faces.’