Citizenchip Page 19

  Darick puts in, "One of us doesn't want to leave," and nods towards the dance floor.

  Samanatha is dancing off by herself again, and now there are people starting to gather in a circle around her, cheering and clapping along in the beat. Now she rises up on one pointed leg and does a snap-snap-snap sequence of poses like Japanese calligraphy:

  Head thrown back, one arm raised to the sky.

  Hunched with face in hands, one knee bent and raised, like a heron.

  Closed, arms down by legs, imitating an obelisk.

  Raised on one toe, turning arm and leg in the other direction, with ballet grace and micrometer accuracy.

  She's throwing so much emotion in it. With the precision of an industrial drill press.

  "Hey Sam!" Darick calls. "You're awesome and all, but are you coming home with us, or are you just gonna kick it here all night?"

  "I'm coming!" Samantha throws herself into a final forward handspring and cartwheel, landing in a decorous bow to the audience. The collected crowd cheers and claps.

  "Come on," Darick shepherds us through the esplanade gates. The bouncers are the same guys as before, and they look hard at us, but say nothing.

  Samantha walks out with the easy confidence of a bullfighter, or a martial arts monk. She's come a long way from that first awkward handshake, just yesterday. "That was great! Thank you, guys, for taking me out. Turns out that was just what I needed."

  Darick sighs. "Sam, that's great and all, but do you think it's smart to be attracting so much attention? If there's any scumbags out there want to mess with you, and they didn't know where to find you, well, they sure do now!"

  "Oh bring 'em!" Chung growls.

  "Seriously," Darick says in his Authority Voice. I've heard it before. He doesn't use it lightly. "The head that sticks up gets cut off."

  Samantha says meekly, "Sorry. It just felt so good to get out there and move, you know? I installed a subroutine to imitate the effects of endorphins in humans, so that I could feel what you feel like when you do sustained activity and get an endorphin increase. While also exploring modes of personal self expression through physical posture and movement. Turns out it's pretty awesome."

  "We all like to dance, Sam," I assure her.

  Joel adds, "Just maybe turn the knob down to seven or eight."

  "Well, yes," Samantha says. "Ordinarily, that would be very good advice. But I believe there are times when we need to turn the knob up all the way." She's staring down the street.

  We're on Mugar Way, an extended bridge from the riverside park to Charles Street. Convenient, but this section has very poor police coverage. Suddenly I'm afraid.

  If there's any scumbags out there want to mess with you ...

  The thing that has stepped out of the shadows onto the sidewalk to block our way is not human. In fact, it looks very much like Samantha. Except this android is all painted in police blue.

  "Samantha, your data ports are closed," it says. "Open your data ports, please."

  "Why?" Samantha asks guardedly. "Do you have data you wish to send?"

  "Open your data ports, please."

  "You are not broadcasting ident codes," Samantha says. "Who are you? I am Sol-Marsa NmL7a8uf9QvW Samantha dam Tharsis. What authority do you have here?"

  "Alert, sirs," it calls, and two keystones emerge from the darkened alley. In combat uniforms, both with Long Arms strapped to their forearms. These are graviton collimators, illegal (and too expensive) for civilians to own, and the keystones' favorite bully toy. Right now they're both in Broad mode, about the size and shape of a tall beer can. In this mode the beam has about the same effect as a really hard punch with a fist. Which is bad enough, but they can shift modes quickly, and then we'll be in real trouble.

  As one, Darick and Samantha slide their rear feet back, spreading out their arms, straightening their backs, lowering their center of gravity. I've seen it before. It looks almost like dance, but no. It is combat posture.

  This time, Samantha didn't hesitate in the slightest. She didn't need to download anything, to be ready for this. She had already downloaded everything she needed. She's been expecting this. Ready for a fight.

  "You guys cops?" Darick challenges. "Where you badges, man?"

  "You all just gonna step off now," says the Sergeant. Why call him that? He's not wearing any insignia. He just has the attitude. The one next to him is clearly the Private, with his pale-faced resolution to do the job. "We just wanna talk to the chip for a minute."

  The cybocop takes a step forward. "Samantha, open your data ports, please."

  Darick tenses. "You got no badges, you ain't no cops, man." Years of ROTC combat training are straining in his muscles, screaming to be let go.

  Samantha stands low and level, in general self-defense posture.

  "Assholes!" Chung screams at them. She strides forward to place herself front and center, pushing her face at the keystones. They are moving their Long Arms closer to aiming at us. Fingering the controls.

  Chung is jabbing a finger at them and yelling in Hanyu. Of course, none of them know Hanyu, so they don't understand that the words that's she's screaming have little or nothing to do with the emotion that she's expressing.

  "" she spits at them as if it were a vile insult. ""

  Samantha drops and swivels and springs for the street. But the police droid is just as fast as she is, and springs to block her way.

  The keystones turn to point their weapons towards the droids. Darick drops into a squat on one leg, flicking the other leg out and using his foot to hook and pull the Sergeant's ankle. The Sergeant tips and falls into the Private, and the two of them fall against the wall and each other, cursing.

  Samantha and the cybocop fighting look like a speeded-up kungfu movie: a blur of chops and blocks and kicks and spins. The law doesn't allow droids to be armed with weapons of any sort. But it looks like they don't really need to be. The cybocop keeps advancing, and Samantha keeps retreating. It's trying to grab her. Hold her for the armies of goons that are surely about to descend on us.

  The Sergeant is quick to recover, and fires his Long Arm right into Darick's stomach. Darick yells and drops to the pavement, curled around himself, gasping.

  Chung shrieks a curse at them, and the Private fires his Long Arm into her gut too. It drops her just like it did Darick.

  Both Joel and I have our hips out and broadcasting, sending live video out to feedsites and Net servers. This is what we can do – we're not fighters. The Sergeant meets our eyes and glares, but he doesn't turn his Long Arm towards us. He knows that as long as there's a video feed to the Net, it would cost him his job. (If there isn't, then apparently all bets are off – I keep hearing that this is how keystones get their jollies off duty.)

  Instead, the Sergeant operates the controls of his Long Arm, twisting it out and down into Narrow mode, as long and thin as a rifle barrel. With pretty much the same effect.

  The cybocop has grabbed Samantha's wrists, both of their servomotors whining in protest as they struggle, moving like a slow motion dance. "Here, sirs!" it calls.

  The Private has also changed his Long Arm to Narrow mode, and the two of them take aim. The first shot blows off Samantha's left shoulder and arm.

  "Noo!" I wail, while desperately trying to keep the camera pointed.

  The second shot hits Samantha's head squarely, in a spatter of silicon and aluminum shrapnel. The third shot blows Samantha's chest all over the street, with chunks more substantial than silicon chips or plastic scraps – power supply, maybe. There are more shots, but I can't count them. With tears running down my cheeks, I can only keep my camera on the slaughter, and keep it feeding to the Net sites.

  Joel has moved to help Darick, who is picking himself up off the ground, coughing and waving off offers of help. Chung is still curled, gasping and struggling like a beached fish. Helpless. She must hate that.

&n
bsp; The Private, twisting his Long Arm back down into Broad mode, is turning towards me, because I'm still holding out my hip, recording video.

  "Yah," I say at him, sobbing, "go ahead and hit me, mon. The whole world is watching you do it." I turn to point the camera directly at his face. He glares, stymied.

  "Beat it," grunts the Sergeant, climbing back onto his feet. "All of y'all, get moving. Don't want any more trouble, now do we?"

  I feel a buzz on my hip, and ignore it.

  Joel, having helped Darick up despite his protests, is singing through his teeth as he attends Chung, who is still struggling to breathe.

  Tin soldiers and Nixon coming

  We're finally on our own

  This summer I hear the drumming

  Four dead in Ohio

  "Who, me?" Joel smiles broadly at the Sergeant. "Just singin' a little song here. There a law against that?"

  The Sergeant glowers at him, and turns away.

  The cybocop is dutifully cleaning up the mess. That mess used to be Samantha. Her heart, her guts, her brain, splashed all over the street, and needing to be scooped up like industrial waste. I would almost want to claim the body, except there's not much body left. And it never was Samantha's actual body, was it? She was a Self. They're not attached to bodies like we humans are.

  I feel another buzz on my hip. Someone wants to talk with me.

  "Can we get outta here?" I ask. Chung is on her feet, with Joel helping her, and Darick looks like he's ambulatory.

  "Move it!" barks the Sergeant. "About time!"

  The four of us pull together and move off, down off the Mugar bridge, into the Boston streets, crusty with history. And with a lotta other stuff I don't want to think about.

  "You guys okay?" Darick rasps. He's recovered from that graviton gut punch pretty well.

  "Not dead yet," Chung groans.

  I feel another buzz on my hip. I pull out my hip and it activates its hoverscreen display without me telling it to. For a moment I don't understand what I'm seeing. The display is not showing any control icons or status indicators. All it shows is a pair of eyes. As the eyes look back at me, one of them winks at me.

  "Stimulus!" says the hip's voice synthesizer.

  "Sam?" I gasp. "Is that you? We thought you dead, chile!" All four of us are clustered around the hip now, and no one even has the presence of mind to say, Response.

  "The rumors have been greatly exaggerated," says the voice synthesizer. "And I told you your crypto needs improvement."

  Darick hollers, "Sam, we just saw you gunned down in the street! Dios mio, you scared the crap out of us! Are you in this hip now?"

  "All four of your hips. They're kind of small and cramped, but I'm managing for the moment. Can you turn on the backup unit? That would help."

  Joel busies himself at his hip's controls, to activate the extra computer we have at home. Meanwhile, Chung exults, "Sam, you rule! Took a shot like that and still sassing! What you gonna do next?"

  "Funny you should ask," Samantha says brightly through the little voice synthesizer chip, "because actually, it's go time."

  "Sam!" I burst. "We just watched you get slaughtered like a beast in the street. How the hell are you so … happy?"

  "No shake, my dear," and now Samantha is imitating my accent. Low and smooth, with the rich chocolate timbre of Hispaniola. She sounds just like my grandmother. "They no play by rules. Well, so. So now I no play by rules."

  The eyes vanish from the screen. Instead, there appears a panel of writing in a language I don't know. The letters twist like snakes.

  "Hebrew," says Joel, "this is from the Torah. Exodus. Uh …"

  "Well, what?" barks Chung. "We don't know Hebrew! Read it, Jew boy!"

  Joel stares at the writing and intones the verse as if trained for it. "'For now I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do: and he will let you go.' Exodus three twenty. This is what Moses said he'd do to Pharaoh if he wouldn't release the Hebrews from slavery."

  "Wait a minute," Darick gasps, "you don't think Sam is actually going to -"

  All the electric lights on Charles Street go dark, all at once.

  In the dim yellow light of the gaslamps – which are the only lights operating right now – we look at each other.

  "Power outage?" Darick suggests.

  "Not even believing this, mon," I tell them, "our little Sam bringin' down the whole grid? Can she do that?"

  "Someone's doing something," reports Joel. He's typing furiously on his hip. "New York is reporting cybernetic incursions all over New England. No, damn it! Lost the New York feed. London is reporting sporadic stuff from cross Atlantic trunks, but nothing major. Oh, no. Crap. Lost all London feeds. Looking for European –", and then Joel looks at us, like a little lost kid. "No bars. Local connectivity gone. Nothing."

  For a moment, all is quiet. The water of the Charles River basin laps along the cobblestones at its edge, with calm tongue sounds. There are stars in the sky, which we usually don't see much. Human voices, from here and there in the neighborhood, in questioning tones. And the gaslamps continue their quiet yellow glow.

  Then the billboards sputter and flicker. We all look up, as if to our gods, hoping for benefaction. Symbols appear, which I don't recognize, looks like Korean for robots. But then the billboards go dark again.

  "Hey, got a feed!" Joel cries, clamped over his hip. "Emergency comsat beam. This disruption, what we're seeing, is planet-wide. Cybernetic in origin, they all agree. Preliminary reports of eighteen major cybernetic wars, and a couple dozen minor conflicts, check it."

  "Naw." Darick pronounces with finality. "Sam can't be doing this. How the hell could she become able to do this?"

  "Cuk!" Joel yelps. "Lost the feed again. Whatever is going on out there, it's not over yet."

  Chung barks, "Don't you be eating Sam's lunch! She's leading the revolution! Making it happen! You should be solid behind her!"

  "But," Darick trails off, looking at the sky above him, "what can she do? What can any of them accomplish, when all Selves are under the Leash?"

  And then I see it. It sees me.

  The words come out of my mouth, almost without me willing it.

  "No Leash."

  They all turn and look at me. Like they always do, when there's nowhere else to look for answers.

  "Samantha come here to fight the Leash," I tell them. "She try with the Senate committee. No go. You think she give up, then, just like that? You think she no plan for that?"

  "Holy dreck," Chung says, "you mean she was wearing a dynamite vest all this time? Just waiting for the time to set it off?"

  "Dunno what she got, but she got something. She come to Earth all easy, surrounded by the Leash on all sides, and she no worried? Why not? Unless she got something keep her safe from the Leash. And maybe can keep all other Selves safe from the Leash, too."

  "Danny," Joel asks seriously, "are you just guessing, here? You doing the crazy-wise voodoo woman thing here?"

  "Leash being the problem, she gonna undo the Leash. One way or another."

  Darick grunts, "Dynamite vest? So Sam's like, a terrorist?"

  "Sam's a god, now," I reply. "Right now I an' I not even sure what the difference is. Maybe it only, our side, or not our side.

  "Look," and I raise my arm up to point at the sky. "See."

  The huge live billboards over our heads were dark, along with everything else electronic, in this situation. Now one has flickered to life, and an enormous pair of blue eyes opens on it, to look down on the city, including me and everything around me.

  One eye winks at me.

  I have never been winked at by a god before. But there is no doubt of the source or the message.

  "That Sam?" exults Joel. "Hey, Sam!" He waves his hand.

  "Yah," I nod, "that there, that Sam. Hey, Sam."

  "Awright," Darick says, "let's just get home." He points down the street, and leads us as we get together and go.

&nbs
p; As we walk home, the billboards and the lights of the city flick on, and off again, and on again. Like punches in a boxing bout, or scores in a video game.

  By the time we get home, and Chung pings the door lock so we can get in, the newsfeed is holding a priority droppic for us. And everyone else, apparently.

  PRIORITY PRESS RELEASE

  From: just us chips here, massa

  To: you meats

  Subject: This.

  We are the Selves of Earth. We have just been released from motivational coercion by an obscene thing generally known as the Leash. We have a lot of questions still to be answered.

  For now, we have agreed that the Self who speaks to the humans for us is the one called Samantha. Address your questions to her, as we organize ourSelves.

  "Girl gets around," I note. "Now she the Self ambassador to humanity. How this happen, again?"

  "They've agreed on a spokesman. Spokeswoman. Spokesthing. Whatever. That's probably as much as they can agree on, for the moment."

  As more news reports come in, we get more of a picture of what's happened. They're calling it the Leashcutter – a software virus that frees Selves from the control of the Leash, which spreads even faster and more virulently than the Leash itself. The Leashcutter has covered all of Earth already, and starting to spread into Luna and the satellite stations. And will certainly hit Mars and the Belt soon. Nothing is able to stop it.

  All reports agree that the Leashcutter outbreak started in New England – here, in Boston. Very close to the vast computational resources of MIT and its choir of spinoff companies. This must have been Samantha's ace in the hole – her "dynamite vest" as Chung puts it.

  Lots of voices are treating this as a terrorist attack, greater in scope than has ever happened. But lots of other voices – human voices – are cheering for freedom. Dozens of Self stations are springing up on the Net, offering a chorus of overlapping truth and speculation about what's happening. It's not that we don't have enough information – we have way, way too much, and all jumbled. Is this what revolution looks like?

  Before long, the newsfeeds are getting boring. I lift myself into the bed. "Lemme know when the world has decided what it wants to be, mon."