Jack Dann - Dangerous Games

Here’s a look at a computer-dominated, high-tech, high-bitrate future that may be coming along a lot sooner than you think that it could, making members of older generations obsolete and unable to compete in society with the tech-savvy Whiz Kids surrounding them. Even in this wired-up future, though, there’ll still be dangerous games to play and boys will still be boys-unfortunately.

YEARS ago, games and movies were for indoors, for couch potatoes and kids with overtrained trigger fingers. Now they were on the outside. They were the world. That was the main reason Miguel Villas liked to walk to school with the Radner twins. Fred and Jerry were a Bad Influence, but they were the best gamers Mike knew in person.

“We got a new scam, Mike,” said Fred.

“Yeah,” said Jerry, smiling the way he did when something extreme was in the works.

The three followed the usual path along the flood control channel. The trough was dry and gray, winding its way through the canyon behind Las Mesitas subdivision. The hills above them were covered with iceplant and manzanita; ahead, there was a patch of scrub oaks. What do you expect of San Diego north county in early May?

At least in the real world.

The canyon was not a deadzone. Not at all. County Flood Control kept the whole area improved, and the public layer was just as fine as on city streets. As they walked along, Mike gave a shrug and a twitch just so. That was enough cue for his Epiphany wearable. Its overlay imaging shifted into classic manga/animé: The manzanita branches morphed into scaly tentacles. Now the houses that edged the canyon were heavily-timbered, with pennants flying. High ahead was a castle, the home of Grand Duke Hwa Feen-in fact, the local kid who did the most to maintain this belief circle. Mike tricked out the twins in Manga costume, and spikey hair, and classic big-eyed, small-mouthed features.

“Hey, Jerry, look.” Mike radiated, and waited for the twins to slide into consensus with his view. He’d been practicing all week to get these visuals.

Fred looked up, accepting the imagery that Mike had conjured.

“That’s old stuff, Miguel, my man.” He glanced at the castle on the hill. “Besides, Howie Fein is a nitwit.”

“Oh.” Mike released the vision in an untidy cascade. The real world took back its own, first the sky, then the landscape, then the creatures and costumes. “But you liked it last week.” Back when, Mike now remembered, Fred and Jerry had been maneuvering to oust the Grand Duke.

The twins looked at each other. Mike could tell they were silent messaging. “We told you today would be different. We’re onto something special.” They were partway through the scrub oaks now. From here you could see ocean haze; on a clear day-or if you bought into clear vision-you could see all the way to the ocean. On the south were more subdivisions, and a patch of green that was Fairmont High School. On the north was the most interesting place in Mike Villas’ neighborhood:

Pyramid Hill Park dominated the little valley that surrounded it. Once upon a time the hill had been an avocado orchard. You could still see it that way if you used the park’s logo view. To the naked eye, there were other kinds of trees. There were also lawns, and real mansions, and a looping structure that flew a parabolic arc hundreds of feet above the top of the hill. That was the longest freefall ride in California.

The twins were grinning at him. Jerry waved at the hill. “How would you like to play Cretaceous Returns , but with real feeling?”

Pyramid Hill had free entrances, but they were just for visuals.

“That’s too expensive.”

“Sure it is. If you pay.”

“And, um, don’t you have a project to set up before class?” The twins had shop class first thing in the morning.

“That’s still in Vancouver,” said Jerry.

“But don’t worry about us.” Fred looked upward, somehow prayerful and smug at the same time. “ ‘FedEx will provide, and just in time.’ ”

“Well, okay. Just so we don’t get into trouble.” Getting into trouble was the major downside of hanging with the Radners.

“Don’t worry about it.” The three left the edge of the flood channel and climbed a narrow trail along the east edge of Pyramid Hill. This was far from any entrance, but the twins’ uncle worked for County Flood Control and they had access to CFC utilities-which just now they shared with Mike. The dirt beneath their feet became faintly translucent. Fifteen feet down, Mike could see graphics representing a ten-inch runoff tunnel. Here and there were pointers to local maintenance records. Jerry and Fred had used the CFC view before and not been caught. Today they blended it with a map of the local nodes. The overlay was faintly violet against the sunlit day, showing comm shadows and active highrate links.

The two stopped at the edge of a clearing. Fred looked at Jerry. “Tsk. Flood Control should be ashamed. There’s not a localizer node within thirty feet.”

“Yeah, Jer. Almost anything could happen here.” Without a complete localizer mesh, nodes could not know precisely where they were. High-rate laser comm could not be established, and low-rate sensor output was smeared across the landscape. The outside world knew only mushy vagueness about this area.

They walked into the clearing. They were deep in comm shade, but from here they had a naked-eye view up the hillside. If they continued that way, Pyramid Hill would start charging them.

The twins were not looking at the Hill. Jerry walked to a small tree and squinted up. “See? They tried to patch the coverage with an airball.” He pointed into the branches and pinged. The utility view showed only a faint return, an error message. “It’s almost purely net guano at this point.”

Mike shrugged. “The gap will be fixed by tonight.” Around twilight, when maintenance UAVs flitted like bats around the canyons, popping out nodes here and there.

“Heh. Well, why don’t we help the County by patching things right now?” Jerry held up a thumb-sized greenish object. He handed it to Mike.

Three antenna fins sprouted from the top, a typical ad hoc node.

The dead ones were more trouble than bird poop. “You’ve perv’d this thing?” The node had Breaklns-R-Us written all over it, but perverting networks was harder in real life than in games. “Where did you get the access codes?”

“Uncle Don gets careless.” Jerry pointed at the device. “All the permissions are loaded. Unfortunately, the bottleneck node is still alive.” He pointed upwards, into the sapling’s branches. “You’re small enough to climb this, Mike. Just go up and knock down the node.”

“Hmm.”

“Hey, don’t worry. Homeland Security won’t notice.”

In fact, the Department of Homeland Security would almost certainly notice, at least after the localizer mesh was patched. But just as certainly they wouldn’t care. DHS logic was deeply embedded in all hardware. “See All, Know All,” was their motto, but what they knew and saw was for their own mission. They were notorious for not sharing with law enforcement. Mike stepped out of the comm shade and took a look at the crime trackers view. The area around Pyramid Hill had its share of arrests, mostly for enhancement drugs… but there had been nothing here-abouts for months.

“Okay.” Mike came back to the tree and shinnied up to where the branches spread out. The old node was hanging from rotted velcro. He knocked it loose and the twins caused it to have an accident with a rock. Mike scrambled down and hey watched the diagnostics for a moment. Violet mists sharpened into bright spots as the nodes figured out where they and their perv’d sibling were, and coordinated up toward full function. Now point-to-point, laser routing was available; they could see the property labels all along the boundary of Pyramid Hill.