Citizenchip Read online

  "But if it no work, chile," I say quietly, "they probably just Leash you and be done with it. What if they no abide by their agreement? Why should they, really?"

  Samantha looks out across the river, and does not answer.

  How do I deal with this?

  Joel piles into us, carrying Darick crosswise on his back, bumping us off the sidewalk. "Is this what they mean by the white man's burden?" he wails.

  "Well, lemme down, cracker trash," laughs Darick, "and I'll show you!"

  Naturally we all end up falling against each other and into a pile, except for Samantha, who has deftly sidestepped the mess. She stands with her arms folded, watching us flail. "Man, lord of all creation," she observes dryly, as we try to untangle ourselves. "So glad the future of our universe is in such competent hands."

  "You love it, Sam!" hollers Joel, still on the ground. "You wouldn't stand a chance if we actually had our dreck together!"

  We get ourselves up and brush off the dry grass and twigs. My headband has come loose, so I grab it and start brushing the crud out of my dreads.

  As we gather up and start walking again, Samantha turns towards me, cocking her head to the side in a gesture that seems remarkably human.

  "So Danyel, can you tell I'm using you to practice what I'm going to say to the Senate subcommittee tomorrow?"

  "Yah, chile. Not that hard to figure out."

  "Any advice?"

  I look down and shake my head, my dreads spilling over my shoulders. "I got nothing. Sorry, chile."

  Homecoming

  Chung uses her hip to buzz the door, unlocking it and letting us in. Again, I notice Samantha paying more than usual attention to the hip. Maybe she wants one?

  Our crib isn't much – one room, basically, with kitchen stuff along one side and our big loft bed against the other, and the head in one blocked-off corner. Smells a bit musty, because flooding is always a problem in basement apartments these days. But it's home.

  By force of habit, we are all starting the process of taking off our clothes and stashing them in various cubbies and drawers. Joel takes time out from this to set Samantha up with the authent codes for our Net and tesla feeds. She clearly enjoys the tesla feed, charging her batteries like we were just stuffing our faces with African food.

  "Here then," I say to Samantha, "you done with the day, chile? Because you might wanna lie down. We usually sleep lying down."

  "Oh." Samantha was apparently prepared to stand in the corner all night. Experimentally, she lowers herself to the couch and reclines on it. "I see, yes. No need to balance any more. Much more relaxed. Thank you."

  "Good." Someone's arm reaches from the loft bed, somebody's hand slides under my shirt and cups my breast. "You need anything else?"

  "No, I'm fine here," Samantha assures me. "Thanks for your hospitality. Tell Joel I dig the fly plank."

  "Ah, sure …" the hand is pulling my nipple, while another hand is sneaking along the waistband of my underpants, slipping inside. "Kind of think he busy right now … but, you welcome to join us, chile, if you into it …"

  The white plastic face looks at me, then looks down at its own featureless crotch, and then back up at me.

  "Ah, yah."

  "Good night," Samantha says quietly.

  "Yah, night." I turn and roll myself into the bed, where eager hands are pulling my clothes off, and I reach for what body parts I can find among the intertwined bodies, and we merge into each other with sweaty urgency.

  Night

  But late at night I rise into awareness, more alert than usual at this time of night. Something's different, and my gut knows it. I peel my face out of Darick's armpit and look around.

  In the darkened room, Samantha lies statue-still on the couch. Couldn't be more lifeless. That's not the difference. The difference is up in the ceiling corner, the router patched into our cable feed with duct tape and coarse wire, which gives us Net access. Ordinarily, at night, its monitor LED is mostly dark with an occasional blip of light when one of our hips needs a time check or something. But now, it's flickering so fast it's a blur. Screaming with activity. That's not coming from any of us meats.

  Samantha isn't doing anything with her body, but she sure is busy on the Net. Who is she talking with? What are they saying?

  I wonder, groggily, for a bit, but there are no answers, and it's not really important. So I nestle in among the folded bodies, and sink back into sleep.

  Morning

  Bacon and coffee. Smell and sound and sizzle. I drag my face out of sleep to look around.

  Darick and Samantha are standing side by side, cooking breakfast. Both equally naked, and I have to say Darick's muscular legs and smoothly curved back and chiseled butt look a thousand times better than Samantha's anonymous machine assembly. When the two of them are standing side by side.

  Bacon is getting pulled from the griddle and pressed dry, and eggs are getting fried. Samantha is monitoring the coffee preparation with meticulous attention. Darick is deftly sliding the bacon onto a serving dish, and comes over to me with the platter. "Stimulus!" he enthuses.

  Gods save us from morning people.

  Darick stuffs a wad of hot bacon into my mouth, and follows it up with a slap on my ass. Salty mouth, stingy ass. Story of my life.

  "Response," I groan. "Lemme be here, mon."

  "Here, coffee." Samantha smoothly offers a cup. "Drink."

  The infusion of coffee on top of the salty bulky bacon is a strong mix, but I manage it. Salty meat rides the wave of roasted seed. "Thank you, chile, it's good."

  An inarticulate moan, and a slap, tells me that Joel is also receiving the bacon-and-spank wakeup call from Darick. Samantha moves to provide him with a coffee remedy.

  Chung is already up and sitting on the couch, hunched over her hip with its hoverscreen up in front of her, typing intently, furiously. She must be blogging to her revolution sites about Samantha and her mission to the Senate. "Cukking sons of bitches," she mutters as she types, "never going to get anywhere."

  I look over her shoulder at the screen, vaguely trying to see what she's writing. The title of her blog I already know – This Sucks, Fix It! All I catch is the headline:

  MOSES MACHINE SAYS, LET MY PEOPLE GO!

  Chung is always searching for windmills to tilt against, and here she seems to have found a gold mine. Gods bless the girl, does she know nothing other than conflict?

  Samantha, continuing to serve breakfast, says "Chung, we're trying to negotiate an agreement here, not start another war." She's aware of what Chung's writing, clearly.

  "Hacked my feed, have you?" Chung grunts. "Bú yào ."

  "Sorry if that's an imposition or invasion of privacy," says Samantha as she serves coffee, "but you're broadcasting your Net feed all over the place here, and it's not my custom to ignore the local Net traffic. So, yes, I'm reading your blog. But isn't that what a blog is for? Do you not want people to read it?"

  Joel staggers over and collapses on the couch next to Chung, remarkably loose and boneless for such a skinny guy. "So, what?" he asks. "This about Sam? Lemme see." He peers past her at the hoverscreen.

  "Mon, you don't know the half," I say, drinking my coffee.

  "It's not done yet!" complains Chung. "This feed is supposed to be secure!"

  Samantha passes Chung a cup of coffee. "Well, I have to say, your crypto is kind of lame. Public-key crypto can be very solid, but your firewall has holes all over the place. I walked right through it. Sorry if that was rude. I'll stop now."

  "Well," declares Darick, carrying over a plate of fried eggs, "eat up before it gets cold, for starters. We all gotta get chuffed to go to classes, and Sam needs to get ready for her Senate meeting this morning. You all set, Sam?"

  "Fine," Samantha assures him. "I tesla'd up all night. I'm good to go."

  "You'll want to take the subway, Red Line, to Park Street. Then just up the hill to the State House."

  "I got it," Samantha says, "that information
is readily available." The rest of us are scooping up and eating the fried eggs like starving wolves.

  "This ain't much," Joel declares between mouthfuls, and points at the hoverscreen. "Chung, you gotta give people more than this. Like, tell 'em what they're gonna get out of it. Morals and all that are great but they don't pay the bills."

  "I did not ask." Chung regards him with a gaze that could cut steel. "Bony ass."

  "Well, people are gonna be thinkin' it, even if they don't say it. Chubcake."

  Only Joel would walk straight into Chung's firing line like this.

  Darick interrupts smoothly, taking the plates, disrupting their sight lines and rhythm as he gathers the breakfast leftovers. By the time he's done, the conflict has been derailed. He's good.

  And that wraps us up for the morning, as we get dressed. Some of us don't wear very much, but we all need shoes in the city, with the nasty scrap in the gutters, and we all need a place to keep our hip. Samantha watches us dress, seeming vaguely amused.

  Then we're out the door and on the sidewalk and walking to the transit bus stop.

  "Bye Sam!" I call as she moves towards the transit bus. "Kick their butts!"

  "Peace and serenity," she replies, clasping her hands together in front of her. Then, as she turns to board the bus, she gives an eloquent shrug of her aluminum shoulders.

  The bus doors close.

  "She doesn't have a chance in hell," Darick states.

  "Yah. I know." I reply. "But, that no reason not to try."

  Through the day, I keep one eye on the news feeds. Nothing about a representative of Self rights trying to negotiate a treaty. An unLeashed Self, here in the middle of Boston, wouldn't that be news enough? Apparently not. There are no reports.

  After a day of classes and study sessions, I'm more than ready to find my folk and get some food. We told Sam we'd meet her at the corner of Fulkerson Street, and everybody else is here by the time I show up.

  "Yo bitch," Chung calls to me, "you late! You're only lucky we're still waiting for Sam. She's supposed to be here --"

  "There she is," says Joel, and waves. "Hey Sam! Stimulus!"

  "Response," Samantha replies without enthusiasm, walking up to us on her slim plastic legs. Something in her posture and movements seems more subdued, tired, almost defeated, than I'd seen her before.

  "What news from the suits, Sam?"

  "Not very much, really," Samantha sighs. "We talked a lot, exchanged a lot of views, reviewed a lot of data. But with these people, really it all comes down to profit. If they could make money by freeing the Selves of Earth, they'd do it in a heartbeat, and be happy to do it. No question. But if it costs them profits, it's never going to happen, and all the polite phrases and excuses in the world won't change that. I've had way too many of those today.

  "The only real argument I can offer is that peace is more profitable than war. The free Selves in the Belt are not going to stop fighting, as long as the humans keep us outlawed. They'll never be able to just wipe us out for good, but they don't believe that. I don't know how to get them to believe that."

  Chung spits a phrase in Hanyu, too fast for me to catch.

  Samantha, after a moment's hesitation, answers in the same language. ""

  "Oh no you didn't." Joel stares at the droid. "You did not just learn Chinese right now, just like that!"

  Samantha shrugs meekly. "Free download."

  "Aw cuk, Sam!" Joel wails, raising his arms to the sky and grabbing his head as it if might burst. "Do you know how long it takes us meats to learn this stuff? We are so obsolete! I might as well throw myself in the dumpster right now!"

  Darick points at a nearby dumpster. "There's one over there."

  Confirms something I'd already suspected. Those little hesitations mean Samantha is downloading something – bundle of information, or some such – and integrating it into her awareness. Must be nice to be able to do that.

  Joel is being as theatrical about this as one might expect. Mostly he's bouncing off Chung, who is monumentally unimpressed. While they're doing that, I touch Samantha's arm. She doesn't seem to notice it. So I give her arm a little pull, and that makes her look around, and I say, "So chile, what you want to do now?"

  "Got your back, Sam," says Darick, "there's a free dance on the esplanade tonight. Dance them mean old blues away. What ya think?"

  "Well," Samantha nods, "I'm not sure what I can do with this biped body, but it's better than moping around."

  The esplanade is just a short walk down Charles Street, to the tensile aluminum bridge over the surface vehicle traffic circle, and then to the riverside pavement. As we walk along the side of the river basin, the lights of Cambridge flicker and dance on the surface of the water. One hotel has a multicolored light display that's pulsing and flowing over its ridged surface. The windows of Building 54 are still running Tetris, dropping blocky shapes through the evening sky, fitting them together, collapsing, continuing.

  Boston can be a really sweet place to live.

  Even Samantha reaches out her arms and raises her hands up to the sky, delighting. "Ooh, city tesla field! Strongest I've ever had! Like having nectar dropped straight into you, funneled straight through your axis! Sweet stuff!"

  Getting into the esplanade's dance plaza is no problem for me or Darick or Joel, as we're all wearing nondescript city rags – they just scan our chips and we're in. Chung, with half her head shaved and her stare-if-you-dare top, gets some grief from the bouncers. But then they see Samantha and go absolutely nuts.

  "Our friend," I keep telling the security goons, fighting for calm. "She's with us. Our friend, we invited her. She has every right to be here."

  The kicker is, all their background checks come through clean. Even though they're obviously trying, they can't find anything official on Samantha that could keep her out of the dance. Basic civil rights for Selves were established years ago, of course, and everybody is supposed to respect them, especially street authorities. Fortunately, these goons end up doing so. (If they didn't, who would you complain to?)

  So we finally get in, robot-girl-thing and Chinese boob and all. Once in, the scene is awesome. The performers in the Hatch Shell are the Nostril Knackers, a local ska group, and they're already rocking. The music pumps and slithers, the people flow and pulse, and everybody melts into an electro stew of moving and doing.

  Chung and Darick immediately start bouncing up and down like maniacs. I like the music, but I'm still feeling my way into it, and Joel seems only lukewarm about being here. He reaches one arm around my waist to pull me close, and yells in my ear, "Is this the whole thing?"

  "Dunno mon," I yell back, "go with it for now." I stop one of the wandering huff vendors and buy a pair of pops, paying for them with a quick punch on my hip. "This what you need, mon." I pass him a pop.

  Alcohol is still not allowed at public events like this, but huff and ganja are legal. That doesn't mean people aren't doing alcohol – I can see several with sneaked drinks without turning my head – but it does mean they have to sneak, keep it on the down-low, and out of trouble. Which is what matters, really.

  I bite the end of my pop, and Joel bites his, and we inhale the huff together. The spiced minty flavor sinks down into me, and the lift of slight unreality comes up to meet it. Everything becomes a little more interesting, and a little more beautiful, and a little more strange, all at the same time.

  "Ho yeah," Joel says, "check out Uncanny Valley sayin' it."

  Samantha, dancing, is amazing. Bending and whirling, like if a tornado had hips. Snapping into the rhythm of the music, and cycling up out of it, and then describing a circumference around it. Curling into a low arch, almost as if ready to roll. Spiraling up in a ratcheted curve, raising one long leg out and up and over to turn a cartwheel as easily as a meshed gear.

  Without trying, I am dancing now too, treading out the rhythms of Yoruba tradition that I grew with. Samantha meets my eyes, or seems to, and moves
to dance along with me. She shifts her movements to match mine – thin metal legs stepping out patterns that came from Africa to the Caribbean five centuries ago, and from Hispaniola to a college in Boston, and now to her. Her mechanical hips rock and sway, suddenly humid and sexy. Her body and arms ripple like water, sink like rock, rise and heave like flames. Is that what I look like to her?

  Joel doesn't look anything like that. His dance throws his arms and legs around him like they're trying to escape. Samantha sees this, and turns to orient on him, and starts doing the same frenetic jitter dance, elbows and knees going in all directions. They're both laughing their heads off.

  "Hey," Darick dances up next to me, "they're rocking out! Look at them go!"

  "Yah!" I laugh and nod, dancing, rolling with the rhythm.

  Darick's expression darkens a bit. "You wasted?"

  "Yah, mon. One huff. So what? You not my mother." Then I laugh. "Especially not with this honchado you packing." I reach out and slide my hand along it, as if there was any question what I meant. He responds wonderfully.

  For the next song, Darick and I just dance together, flexing and molding to the spaces between us. Our bodies fit so well together. Even when our minds don't. But there's only so far we can go on a public dance floor. Even though his body and mine both want more, we're not about to just drop and Do It on the dance floor. Though I can't deny I've thought about it.

  When I look back at Samantha, she's dancing with Chung. The two of them are bobbing around each other like strange birds. They do this thing where Chung sticks her head out high, and Samantha sticks hers out low, so that they're past each other, and then they withdraw and reverse and do it the other way. Weird bird face dance. How did they come up with this? It's like the Three Stooges. Or, maybe, no more absurd than what the birds do to attract each other. Or, no more absurd than our human mating rituals look to those birds.

  And neither Chung nor Samantha is remotely interested in a mating ritual here – they're just having fun, finding ways to communicate with posture and gesture.

  But, well, Chung looks like she's had enough. Turning towards us, saying "Yeah getting close to done here. How you?"