Shine

by Jetse de Vries

  There was a man in a black suit standing at the center of the waste piles. He was looking up in Inácio’s direction.

  “And this is the part I change the script,” Capitão told him. “Write your report anyway you can. But don’t mess with the carbon smugglers. They’ll kill you.”

  In a tiny window, Bispo looked nervous, but that could be the result of the video’s low resolution or Inácio’s own weariness. “Hey, Inácio! Tried to moIP you, but it seems you’re offline,” said Bispo in the recording. “Look, I found something that might be useful. I decided to nose into Gear4’s deals record and there were some contracts with volunteers for research into a new direct control interface for their videogames. And Lúcio was in.” Inácio felt the buzz rise to an almost unbearable volume. The man in the black suit waved him an invitation to follow and before Inácio thought about it, he was on the move, going down the stairs, leaving his father and their argument with no further ado.

  The lights started to fail. Lúcio waited at the door.

  “Am I hallucinating?” Inácio was feeling feverish and completely worn out. He was an arm’s distance from a ghost wearing his lover’s shell.

  “Sort of.” Lúcio’s voice was most tired, yet his appearance couldn’t be more jovial. “Come. There’s no time. I can’t keep the connection. Come to the market. No one will harm you. They’ll bring you to my presence. You must help me die.”

  And for the third time since they met, he vanished.

  A YOUNG SOLDIER led Inácio down corridors through the boxes in the very heart of São José’s Market. Inside the nineteenth century building, anything could be found. Electronics and herbs, software and food. Live animals, healthcare and personal data centers. But in its center there was a tent, like a circus, where the many types of carbon credits, from sulfates to oxides and dangerous wastes, were sold under the counter. Inácio walked fast, almost faster than his armed guide. The boy picked him up in the market’s main entrance. Neither of them spoke. The boy knew, Inácio knew.

  Fabric walls divided the space inside the tent, a business center made of cotton and organic polymers. Inácio could see through half-opened curtains some of the businessmen gesticulating over invisible, encrypted AR screens, buying and selling hacked or forged credits. When deals were set, one would slide a hard drive, a physical, wireless cube where data was locked.

  The scene repeated itself until the guide stopped in front of a nondescript door-curtain and told Inácio to go in.

  “I thought you wouldn’t come.” Lúcio stood alone in the room, wearing the same suit and the same worn out features. But he smiled, and that made Inácio’s heart thump. He felt tears rolling from his eyes. He was confused and tired and probably mad, but hell, was he happy.

  “I don’t understand,” said Inácio still at a safe distance, but willing to ignore his survival instincts and grab Lúcio in his arms. “Are you alive? How?”

  “No, I’m not. Yet, I’m dying again.” It was Lúcio who ended up making the first move. His feet didn’t touch the ground and he stopped just a few inches from Inácio’s mouth. “And I need your help to figure out if I should let go.”

  “What am I supposed to do? What happened?” Inácio went forward, looking for a much longed kiss, but the man he desired dodged his caress.

  “Physics engines. Sorry I didn’t tell you.” They both looked sad and tired. “I’m not here. I’m nowhere near. I’m not anywhere. Not at all. It happened by accident, but now I’m without a single physical form. My body is a wall, your shirts, the space within circuits. And I think I can bring you here soon. But I don’t think it is the right thing to do.”

  Inácio looked around the room, its inner walls blinking with embedded systems. A large personal data center was in a corner and next to it a black hard drive. “Why not?”

  “Because I think you wouldn’t like the broader consequences. But since I’m not sure about your opinion, I can’t decide it by myself. See the drive? It contains detailed information about all the carbon footprint I generated since I joined Gear5. Read it and decide if this is the path we should follow before my code goes public in the morning. When that happens, I won’t be me anymore.”

  Lúcio turned his engines off and got closer to Inácio, his black skin reflected in green semi-transparent eyes. The greenman watched his partner kneel down, his face turned upwards, smiling, too close to his groin. “But before you do it,” Lúcio began, “turn your haptics on.”

  THE SURF CLOSE to the wall was brief, but beautiful nevertheless in Recife’s waking hours. The sun had fully risen and Inácio sat on the stone parapet, his shoeless feet swinging free, getting wet in the salty drizzle. He kept the black hard drive next to him and away from the fatal fall. His vision was filled with diagrams, schematics and other greenmen’s projections for the next several years.

  He didn’t wait long for the call.

  “Good morning, Mr. Lima,” said Cloak-and-globe.

  “Yeah. Good.” His eyes were sunk inside his skull, his body ached, his eardrums were blown. But it was a good day. Except that, in his mind, the decision Lúcio demanded wasn’t clear.

  “Is the report ready?”

  “Yes, it is. I’m uploading it to you.” Inácio dragged the icon to a virtual table close to his client. “Done. You have my account, so I’m sure you’ll transfer my money.” Inácio jumped back to the sidewalk, barefooted, and headed to the escalator.

  “Mr. Lima! Wait,” said the globe, the storm in his glassy head less visible under daylight. “I’d like to know your personal opinion on the matter. This document will surely give me and the group I represent all the details, numbers and other minutiae necessary to decide. But time’s short and if you could provide me a quick analysis, that’d be much appreciated.”

  Inácio stopped just before the escalator’s steps, rolling down to the avenue. “My opinion? You want my opinion?” He assumed the most professional tone he could. “Gear5’s new technology is highly disruptive. It puts an end to our time and begins another one, potentially radically different from any other in human history.” He moved closer to the boy-investor.

  “But it needs so much energy, so much bandwidth, that three or four Earths would be necessary to feed it. Think about a datacenter for a whole mind. The computational power needed to calculate the simplest of human decisions. The raw materials needed to build all that infrastructure.

  “Yesterday’s blackouts were the result of their iteration prototype running. They’re consuming the city’s whole energy and communications. That’s why they were buying so much carbon. They thought it’d make the technology pass the trade regulations. They didn’t think about the impact. Not to mention that only those rich enough to pay the stratospheric price Gear5’s asking would be able to buy the uploading code and hardware. It will generate a kind of inequality never seen before.

  “So, no. This product isn’t sustainable in the current state of the technology.

  “However, in the longer term fusion has the potential to end poverty, disease, and the necessity to consume Earth’s natural resources. The few surviving post-humans may live in a golden, perfect time. I’m serious.” Inácio crossed his arms. “It’s your call.”

  A moment of silence fell between them. The third morning train broke the city’s silence, running north, fast and empty.

  Cloak asked a final time, slowly. “And what do you think my group should do?”

  Inácio paused for a moment, thinking. That could work. “Your group should approach Gear5 with an offer they can’t refuse. Be aggressive. Gather all the intellectual capital your group has and tell the company it’ll be all theirs, but only if Gear5 postpones the product’s release. And what’s more, make them sign a contract saying that a final version of the technology will only go public when all the drawbacks are overcome. Energy, materials, costs, everything. That way, it becomes not only sustainable, but absolutely desirable.”

  The kid under the digital cloak nodded and, wrapping
up Inácio’s report, turned to close the connection. “Thank you, Mr. Lima. It was a pleasure doing business with you.” The next moment he was gone.

  When Inácio was about to leave, he noticed the hard drive still standing on the parapet, where he forgot it. He walked towards the sea, grabbed the box and returned to the escalator, where Lúcio waited for him.

  He wondered what the carbon footprint for love is.

  Google.gov pleased to proclaim: ads on cyber cash so successful taxes repealed; find new product placement opportunities on virtual bills!

  —Jason Stoddard—

  Overhead

  Jason Stoddard

  IMAGINE A PERSON who is as helpful as he can be when you’ve just touched down in his home city, and still apologises for every little thing that goes wrong, even if it is something completely out of his control. Who tries to be the perfect host while the incessant needs of his multimillion dollar company keep calling/SMSing/tweeting/pinging him.

  Imagine a person who moves important business meetings around just to pick you up from LAX, who takes you to a fine hotel in Santa Clarita, and then takes your jetlagged body to a fine restaurant while being very patient with your rambling self.

  Imagine a person who gladly offers his company to store a huge batch of magazines you hope to sell at WorldCon, who helps you transport them there, all because you’ve helped publish some of his stories in a magazine that—compared to his day-to-day business—is basically small beans.

  Imagine a man who works crazy hours, hires crazy people, and writes crazy stories in the minimal spare time he has. A man who is optimistic against the grain, whose internet advertising company survived the burst of the internet bubble and the credit crisis.

  Then you have Jason Stoddard, a kindred spirit if I ever saw one. He’s the ‘can-do’ mentality become flesh, living the dream (even if it means fighting every inch of the way). Here’s a man who knows that progress comes four steps forward to three steps back, and at a price. But who, incessantly, believes in the goodness of the human race, who believes in progress, even in a world whose pendulum has swung a bit too far the other way.

  A world where the pioneering spirit is just overhead.

  “CANDY!” NILS LOERA said.

  “No,” his mother told him.

  “Yes!” Nils jumped over Ani Loera’s shoulders. Another bounce took him to the corridor ceiling, where he swung ahead of her on the exposed steel beams.

  Ani shook her head. At 6 years old, Nils had already formulated his most important equation: SHIPMENT = TREAT. Nils was black-haired, blue-eyed, round-faced, and an endless bundle of energy. She couldn’t help grinning at him.

  I have a kid. On the moon.

  And he’s cute.

  “Candy!” Nils yelled, disappearing down the corridor.

  Ani caught up to him at the shaker. Nils bounced up and down in front of the scarred plastic window, frowning.

  “Where’s the people?” Nils asked.

  “What?”

  “Nobody there.”

  Ani squinted through the foggy, scratched plastic. There was only one person in the airlock. His spacesuit bore a faded tag: SHAO. Jun Shao. His silver-visored helmet reflected stark gray walls and her furrowed brow.

  Ani ticked an impatient tune on the cold steel walls as the shaker knocked the abrasive moon-dust from Jun’s suit. Nils tried to do the same, but his young fingers weren’t quite coordinated enough.

  Eventually, the airlock door swing open. Jun stepped out, popping his helmet. His expression was blank, unreadable.

  “What happened?” Ani asked.

  Jun shook his head. “Nothing there.”

  “Nothing there? What do you mean, nothing there?”

  “No shipment.”

  “No newbies?”

  “No people, no parts, no nothing.”

  Ani felt fear twist her guts. They’d never missed a shipment. Ever. Not for—

  Not for 15 years.

  Jun shucked his gauntlets and hung them under his name in the rack. He sat down on a bench and began wriggling out of his suit. Nils helped him pull. Jun gave the kid a weak grin and let Nils unlatch his boots.

  “Maybe it went off-course.“

  “Has it ever gone off-course?”

  A sudden thought, clear and distinct, as if someone had spoken in her ear: What if this is the end of the shipments?

  Ani paced. “Did you look around?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thoroughly?”

  “Peep my stream!” Jun looked up at her. For the first time, she saw his wide eyes. He was terrified, too.

  Ani’s watchstream buzzed, signaling a direct message. She glanced at it; messages scrolled, as watchers realized something bad was happening. They’d be looking to her for direction.

  What a terrible time to be Prime, she thought. She’d won the lottery last month.

  “We have to go back out,” she told Jun. “We have to look for the drop. The shipment may have gone off course.”

  “It’s never gone off course—”

  “I know. But we have to look.”

  Jun stopped moving and just looked at her, his face an unreadable mask of exhaustion. Ani wondered how many shifts he’d run in a row. Two? Three? More?

  “Put your suit back on,” she told Jun.

  Nils stopped helping Jun with his suit and looked up at her, frowning.

  Ani sighed and addressed the nearest surveillance dot: “Anyone else with outside experience and a suit, come down. We need to make as many tracks as we can.”

  Slowly, Jun started putting his suit back on.

  “No candy?” Nils asked.

  Ani forced a smile. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “YOU WANT TO sell me insurance?” Thom Lyman said. They were on the tee at the #3 hole of Paradise Springs. Above the rust-colored Arizona hills, the Scottsdale sky was spring-perfect, deep and impossibly blue, with brilliant white streamers of clouds above.

  Roy nodded and forced his widest smile. “That’s the idea.”

  Thom paused in mid-swing. “Insurance that’ll set us up on the moon in case of catastrophic failure of the Earth’s economy?”

  Roy Parekh felt himself break into a sweat. “You read it.”

  “Of course I read it.”

  “Oh.”

  “I particularly liked the part about ‘an alternate location distribution system with a focus on dramatically new infrastructure and export/import possibilities.’”

  “I...”

  Thom grinned, creasing his face. He waved Roy up to the tee. “Take your shot.”

  “Are you—”

  “Take it.”

  Roy went to the tee and looked out over the hole. Perfect green grass stretched in front of him, like an old Windows desktop. Roy’s hand trembled slightly as he placed the ball. Golf was a really insanely stupid game. But it was how you closed deals. And he was real good at closing deals.

  Until now.

  Roy’s shot sliced into the rough and bounced into the sand and cactus bordering the course.

  “How long have you been out of work?” Thom said.

  Roy said nothing for a long time. He thought of throwing his club after the ball. He thought of walking off the course. He thought of the Citicorp work farms.

  “Sixteen months,” Roy said, after a while.

  “Your investments?”

  “Nothing left.”

  “How about Susan?”

  “She wanted kids. I can’t. She left.”

  Thom shook his head. “Christ on a barbecue.”

  Roy just waited. Waited for Thom to ask, So, you thought I’d fall for it? So, you thought you’d leech off me?

  But Thom just sighed and said, “Why didn’t you do something important?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were the smart one.”

  “What?”

  “Back in USC. Why didn’t you do tech or something?”

  “Because—”

&n
bsp; Because the needle bounces off the end of the record, thwup, thwup, thwup, fashions and thought and styles recycled on shorter and shorter swings, nothing new, nothing important. Nobody picking up the needle. Hell, nobody looking at the record and thinking, Time to swap it out for an iPod.

  “—because it was too easy at Prudential.”

  “Until the Rethink screwed you.”

  Roy blurted a gust of laughter. “Exactly.”

  Thom went to the cart and put his club away. He looked up at Roy. For a moment his eyes were cold and dead, like a lizard. Then he grinned.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay what?” Roy asked

  “Okay. I’ll sign it. Google won’t miss a few thousand a month. And you need it a lot more than them.”

  “Really?”

  “I can’t do it longer than a year.”

  Roy’s legs went rubbery. He leaned heavily on the cart. This was it. This was what he needed. Just one more chance. But. “But... you know it’s a scam.”

  Thom laughed. “Most insurance is.”

  ANI FORCED HERSELF to look at the people and smile. Over two hundred of them; ten times the usual number. Their eyes were cold and sharp, like broken glass.

  The week since the missed shipment had been hard. She’d had to moderate seventeen trios. Mainly for trivial stuff: breaking a tech module that could easily be replaced, setting the price too high on luxury water, an argument over bonuses for expansion of the farms. Stupid things, easily resolved with a quick look at the historical streams or a glance at the optimal ratios. Stuff that would never go to trio, before.

  When will they get together and challenge me? Ani wondered. It would almost be a relief. Someone else could be Prime, and she wouldn’t have to worry about the leadership lottery ever again.

  “Opening the 787th Open Meeting for the Community of Hermes, Moon, Ani Loera, Prime,” Ani said.

  They were murmuring.