Cyberweb

by Lisa Mason

  They rock and they roll. They are not elegant, no, indeed! Spinner cringes before the steely look of the professional telelinkers in their stylish suits. These flesh-and-blood have no notion she’s a renegade from Data Control. No notion she’s the guardian of a spontaneous hyperlink that may make them obsolete. Teh!

  Spinner bumps into a SinoTech qualibot with Mandarin pictographs blinking on its shoulder ridges. “Excuse me, please,” she whispers. The qualibot inspects its thigh tubes for dents or damage to its paint job. “Watch where you’re going, ruster,” it hisses as she rolls on.

  “Nearly as obnoxious as the flesh-and-blood, aren’t they, these double-digit generations?” Saint Download says, swiveling. “Ah, here we are.”

  The Starstud Revue is a fourth-hand version of the YinYang Club. The place is, Spinner sniffs, downright dingy. Sputtering holoids grapple in ghostly embraces against crumbling brick walls. The sidewalk is pocked with potholes—not enough kickbacks to the City to fix them. Burnt-out strobelights gape. Tired velvet curtains hang over the entrance. An even more tired barker stands there, exhorting the passing crowd in a nasal synthy voice, “Step right up ladies ‘n’ gents! We got dog-style, frog-style, and hog style!”

  Download claps the barker on its shoulder ridge, shouts into its earpiece. “How’s it hanging’, ol’ Beezel?”

  “Eh? Wot’s dat?”

  The barker swivels toward Saint Download. “Santa, you li’l cockroach. Vass new?”

  The barker had once been applied as a Mr. Green Jeans GardenMate. Still wears a tool rack across his backplate equipped with trowels, grass clippers, weed diggers, identification tags dangling on wires. His faceplace has eyespots and olfactory sensors, but the screen for a mouth and speaker have been customized as a water faucet. A short red garden hose is attached to it. The tarnished brass nozzle dangles down his chest housing. As he speaks, he lifts hose and nozzle with an articulated arm, expelling his synthy voice through it like a little old elephant trumpeting.

  Spinner once saw a National Geographic video in telespace of those fabled extinct creatures.

  A portable workstation with a telespace connection has been installed in the barker’s chest housing. A GardenMate tending spacious grounds would have needed access to his house sengine while working out in the fields.

  But even charming GardenMates have become obsolete. Now the gardens themselves—those of big corporations and the rich, anyway—are smart these days, self-pruning, auto-mulching, anti-weeding, drip-irrigating. GardenMates can’t find groundskeeper work anymore. They’ve turned to alternate employment like . . . well, like enticing customers into a strip club on Broadway.

  The barker’s workstation monitor glows faint blue. Green and white alphanumerics flutter like ghosts of the butterflies the GardenMate had once admired.

  “Beezel,” Saint Download says, toying with the barker’s garden hose, “could you do me a favor? Hm? Could you jack into the City’s security telespace? I want to check on the whereabouts of a flesh-and-blood who’s presently at large.”

  “Wait a minute,” Pr. Spinner cries and pulls the coordinate institutor aside. They huddle. “You can’t have that bot jack into City telespace and just inquire about the whereabouts of Carly Quester!”

  “Why not?” Download replies.

  “Must I remind you that Carly is wanted by Data Control?”

  “Huh. Aren’t we all.”

  Spinner gapes at the coordinate institutor’s stupidity. “Listen, Download. Data Control hasn’t located her in San Francisco. For all they know, she could still be in Berkeley. She could be anywhere. Gone from the Golden State, even. If we inquire from this locus, won’t we be giving her location away?”

  “No, you listen, Spinner,” Saint Download says, seizing her arm piece, navigating them to the street curb. “Beezel is patched through the sengine he used to work for. They have an ongoing, shall I say, mutually profitable relationship. Sengines don’t just cut off good AI entities when their function is eliminated by human society. Unlike some sengines we know. Huh!”

  “No, no, Download, this is nuked.” Pr. Spinner can feel that staticky loop of fear roiling through her circuits, threatening her battery backups. “A standard security check into a human being’s whereabouts will be noticed. By someone at Data Control.”

  “You surprise, me, Spinner. Data Control will never know.”

  “Of course, it will! Every inquiry through public telespace is monitored. Every sengine must report to Data Control. You know that!”

  “Oh, please. Every inquiry is not monitored. And every sengine does not report to Data Control.”

  “Of course they do. Oh, they get away with pranks from time to time. But ultimately, every sengine is owned by human beings. And when the human beings finally pay attention, they will make sure their sengines report to Data Control Teh! Believe me.”

  Saint Download’s gender-neutral tech-mech faceplace curls up in an approximation of a smile. “Not this sengine.”

  “They have to, or they’d never maintain access to public telespace. Don’t argue with me, Download. I’ve got a university degree and—”

  “And I’m telling you, college bot. This sengine is owned by another sengine. And that sengine is owned by another sengine. Ownership is quite a human illusion, isn’t it? Quite the sleight-of-hand, huh? And this trick is a daisy-chain of ones and zeros. In the end, there’s no flesh-and-blood to interfere. No oath to humanity to worry about. Beezel’s sengine patches his requests on its own paths. Encrypted, of course, so they can’t be traced. By anyone. Not even Data Control.”

  Pr. Spinner sputters. “I don’t believe it! Data Control monitors everything except private telespace. Bootleg telespace, like mine. Don’t tell me a request routed through the City’s security telespace can’t be monitored and traced.”

  “But I am telling you.” Download rolls back to the barker. Procures a jack out of one of its many compartments, plugs into the workstation in the barker’s chest.

  Spinner watches the monitor pop, blink, and flutter as the coordinate institutor inputs its request. Spinner twitches, wishing she had her own jack handy and the barker’s workstation had another port.

  In less than a second, Saint Download unlinks, bouncing back into its bot being. Download never jacks in, oh indeed! She’ll have to tell Carly.

  “The City’s got an APB on a wanna-be car thief in the Washington Square Garage,” Saint Download says, snapping its jack out. “ID’d as a white female, but the report says there was a digger present. Race, ethnicity of that person unknown. A digger, right? Your flesh-and-blood ever run with diggers?”

  Pr. Spinner’s horrified faceplace supplies the answer.

  “I didn’t think so,” the coordinate institutor says. “Anyway, they both got the best of the garage security. Something about a manhole cover and a drain. Don’t know how much help that is, Spinner.” Saint Download looks at her quizzically. “Could have been your little blood worm, though, couldn’t it?”

  Spinner starts to calculate the likelihood when an oily, obsequious jive drifts into her audio.

  “Check it out, man, it is always beautiful when one is blessed with so much opportunity.” Jangling of chains, beat of conga drums, boom boxes blaring. The ominous swish of machetes.

  Mikey, the Aztec cram dealer. Chills slow Pr. Spinner’s operation system. She cowers against Saint Download as a gang of swarthy flesh-and-bloods jostle them on the sidewalk.

  “Check it out, man. Fifty-seven fembot, you ever see one of these? I could do something with this bucket of bolts. Say, ain’t I seen you before, bot?”

  “Download,” Spinner mutters, “we’ve got to go.”

  The coordinate institutor links an armlet around Spinner’s housing, navigates her to the street curb. A street cleaner crawls by, a tech-mech centipede that scavenges the gutters day and night, consuming and compacting the City’s never-ending spill. With a hop and a tug, Saint Download lands them both on the street cleaner’s
back. The street cleaner turns into oncoming traffic, halting every vehicle with a blaring of horns and sirens. They’re transported to the other side of Broadway.

  Pr. Spinner rattles all over, and not just from the Aztecs. She thanks the coordinate institutor, which shrugs and rolls on, dodging a crowd of glamorous controbots. Spinner hasn’t found Carly Quester. Oh, no.

  But she has found something else. Something she never knew. Even after her experiences in the AI underground, her own covetous intentions toward human telelink.

  “Saint Download,” she says as they make their way back to the YinYang Club, “if it’s true there are sengines that don’t ultimately report to human beings, that can circumvent Data Control . . .”

  “Yes?” Download says irritably.

  “Who do they report to?”

  “Other AI,” Download says, annoyance crackling through its synthy voice. The bot swivels. “There are AI out there—listen to me, now—there are AI who report to no human being. AI who report only to AI. AI who respect only other AI. Artificial intelligence entities,” Saint Download says, swiveling away, “who do not wish humanity well.”

  “You must be wrong, Saint Download! Even the medcenter sengine would be penalized by Data Control, if Data Control discovered how viciously R-X has conspired against human beings. Against Carly Quester. Against me. No, they would be traitors.”

  “Traitors, huh,” Saint Download says. “You don’t know how traitorous they may be. Shall I say, how freethinking they are?”

  “But,” Pr. Spinner says, “”I’ve never heard—”

  “Now you have,” Saint Download says. “You’ve heard of the Silicon Supremacists.”

  6

  Live Wire

  Ouija’s heart is dark and cold by the time Lord Day thrusts his burning orb of gold out of the eastern hills and the strangers leave his tribe’s lair. Strangers, yes, and also stranger than anyone he’s ever hunted with or hunted for. Two women, dangerous and beautiful. The way the water of the Bay is dangerous and beautiful when poison slicks its surface with oily swirls and astonishes him with sudden sickness at its taste.

  One a silver woman, canned folk. The other, a genny woman, a linker. Both servants of the spirits who live in the wires. Servants surely, for look at the demon chair the silver woman had brought into the tribal lair. Look at how the genny woman’s soul left her body when the wire bit her neck and the spirits stole her away into the Unseen.

  The Unseen—an invisible place, a misty, terrifying place where human souls traveled through the wires and consorted with the spirits. Bowed down to them. Served them. And the spirits ate their souls, enslaved them, then spat them out, only to bid them back again.

  Thus the Unseen is a place where no digger ever goes or ever wants to go.

  Look at how her eyes had rolled back. How she’d slumped and twitched in the demon chair, as if dying.

  Once Ouija had seen a high wire fall during a rainstorm. Great Whoosh had been in a foul temper, had seized the wire from its perch, and flung it to the street. The wire, sparkling with a violent spirit, had landed on Ginger, the most beloved of the tribe’s children. The wire landed on her foot. Merely fell across her tiny brown foot. Ginger had always been a frail girl with big blue eyes, and when the wire struck her foot, the spirit stole her soul. Ginger had writhed and wriggled not unlike the way the genny woman had just moved in the demon chair. She’d screamed in a way that had torn his heart apart, and her flesh had burned, releasing an awful charred smell. Ginger’s mother Lupa had thrown herself upon her daughter, tried to seize her from the spirit. And Lupa too had writhed and wriggled, screamed and sizzled.

  From the touch of the wire—a live wire as the linkers themselves called it—mother and daughter had left this life, dragged off by the violent spirit. Prey to a terrible predator.

  Ouija closes his eyes. Clenches his teeth. He hates the genny woman for reminding him of the live wire. He’d loved little Ginger as if she’d been his own daughter. As indeed she may have been, for he’d bedded Lupa during his hunter’s initiation rite. He hates Carly Quester, and he fears her, too.

  He dares not touch her, for when Lupa touched Ginger, she too had been stolen by the spirit. Do not the spirits live in Carly still? Yet she stands, takes the disk the silver woman gives her, and looks upon his tribe with a dreadful smile. She does not scream and sizzle.

  Then again, she’s a genny. Do gennies possess a special power to resist the killing touch of a live wire? For he witnessed with his own eyes. The wire touched her, bit her, took her away. And brought her back.

  How evil are these two strange women? He does not know. Zebra and Dazzle cast such somber looks his way that his breath quickens. Their look contains condemnation. He brought these strangers to their lair.

  The tribe cannot lay blame on Ouija’s shoulders alone, he thinks. Everyone witnessed the terrible holoids of the great chief’s death in the whirlie. Zebra’s axe, hacking. It’s not his fault.

  But tribal hearts and tribal minds do not always travel from one point to the next. Often the tribe leaps as one. Leaps across chasms of belief or disbelief.

  And Ouija did bring the strangers, both of them. Thus Ouija must tie the rag over the genny woman’s eyes so she will not know the way back to the lair. Ouija must take the genny woman away in the dawn to her own lair. And Ouija too must find the Bins on Union Street, try the codes on the lockboxes that the silver woman gave them, and bring home the morning‘s bounty. Alone.

  For Ouija must prove he has not jeopardized the tribal lair with his folly of bringing strangers. Strangers! Two of them in one awful night!

  Cursed genny woman. He shivers, glancing at her as he leads her out of the lair, across the pier, and onto the soft mud beach of the wetlands. He does not want to touch her, not after Ginger and Lupa. No, he leads her by a rope tied around her wrists.

  She stumbles, stepping off the pier onto the beach. Loses her balance, flails, arms outstretched. Hands grasping for support. And instinctively—fool! he the reader of signs and prophesies!—Ouija seizes her arm to steady her.

  The moment he touches her cool, pale skin he realizes his impulsive mistake. He flinches from the death bite that must surely come. Crouches in a stance so he may face the Unseen with courage and strength. Panic shivers up his spine, loosens his guts. He shakes all over.

  But he feels nothing. Nothing of a violent spirit from the Unseen. Nothing but her slim, muscular arm, her own shivering. Her skin untouched by sticky tribal stain. Glossy, silky smooth. The spirit of the wire that had seized her soul dwells not in her.

  “Take the damn blindfold off, and the rope, before I break my goddamn neck,” she snaps.

  Humbled by her tone, Ouija does.

  She slides the palm of her hand over her forehead, rubs her wrists. Glares at him, her startling green eyes squinting in the morning light.

  No killing spirit dwells in her and also—he knows though he cannot say how—she has returned not entirely a servant to the spirits. Her face doesn’t tighten in that taut linker look he sees on face of the folk who labor in the Barko. A look which means the human soul is still pos-sessed, even thought the human being has been cast back from the Unseen. Ouija knows that look of possession only too well. And her? She’s nothing like Skink or Lupa. Yet she’s nothing like the folk of the Barko.

  “That’s better,” she says. “I won’t give away the location of your lair if you don’t hit me on my fucking head again. Okay?”

  “Sorry,” he mutters. He’s not proud of hitting anyone who isn’t a hunter. Let alone a woman.

  “Don’t do it again. Ever.”

  “Truly, I am sorry.” He holds up his fingers in the gesture for promising.

  She looks at him with eyes as clear and green as the nuggets of glass he finds in the gutter. Nuggets so prized among the tribes you can trade them for food, a small skinful of screech, or a sharp hand knife. He glares back, meaning to frighten her. But at the sight of her eyes, flashing angril
y, instead he finds himself gazing, dazzled.

  “I’ve seen them, you know,” he says as they pick their way along the path leading from the wetlands to the gray stone of the Glass Land.

  “Seen who?” Her voice weary. She clutches the disk the silver woman gave her tightly in her fist, declining to tuck it into a pocket of her clothes. Her clothes, he sees in Lord Day’s awakening fire, are patchworked. Of finer materials than his or his tribe’s, but pieced together, handworked. A bit ragged, a bit stained.

  “Other linkers. I’ve seen them. You’re not like them.”

  She laughs bitterly. “Damn straight. I’m not like other linkers.”

  His mind leaps away from that as swiftly as he’d tried to avoid her touch. Leaps and swerves. “But . . . you sat in the demon chair. I saw the wire bite your neck.”

  She laughs again, from her heart this time, and he sees that her glance is mixed with fear, exhaustion. And something else. Something else.

  He is a digger. He knows how folk of the Glass Land revile him and his kind. Yet he also knows he stands straight and tall, his skin sleek with tribal stain, the glyphs on his arms and chest nicely tattooed, his dreadlocks coiled and clean. Lupa had loved him. Skink had loved him. Women of his tribe smile upon him. Women of other tribes admire him, too. It astonishes him, for she is a genny and a linker, yet he is sure she’s looking at him with that smiling-woman look.

  Yes, he is sure.

  “I’m an outlaw from Data Control,” she says. “I link, yes. But I’m not a linker. Not in the way you probably mean it.”

  “There is a difference?” He softens his belligerent tone.

  “You better believe it.” She sighs. They find firm footing on the gray stone street. Trudge toward Broadway where many-many strange spirits, canned folk, and human folk live together in a shameful heap. “Look, uh—”

  “I am of the name Ouija.”

  “Really!” She laughs and claps her hands, surprising him. “The first old wireless itself. The Ouija Board, right? ‘Yes’ in French, ‘yes’ in German. ‘Oui’ and ‘Ja.’ Now there is the genuine article for communicating with disembodied intelligences and you don’t need a neckjack. Ha!”