Cory Doctorow - Eastern Standard Tribe

"How the fuck do you like it, jackoff? Don't ever fucking cut me off!" He was a middle aged white guy in a suit, driving a car that was worth a year's wages to Art, purple-faced and pop-eyed.

Art felt something give way inside, and then he was shouting back. "When I want your opinion, I'll squeeze your fucking head, you sack of shit! As it is, I can barely contain my rage at the thought that a scumbag like you is consuming air that the rest of us could be breathing! Now, roll up your goddamned window and drive your fucking bourge-mobile before I smash your fucking head in!"

He shut his mouth, alarmed. What the hell was he saying? How did he end up standing here, outside of his car, shouting at the other driver, stalking towards the Flea with his hands balled into fists? Why was he picking a fight with this goddamned psycho, anyway? A year in peaceful, pistol-free London had eased his normal road-rage defense systems. Now they came up full, and he wondered if the road-rager he'd just snapped at would haul out a Second-Amendment Special and cap him.

But the other driver looked as shocked as Art felt. He rolled up his window and sped off, turning wildly at the next corner-Brookline, Art saw. Art got back into his rental, pulled off to the curb and asked his comm to generate an optimal route to his hotel, and drove in numb silence the rest of the way.

They let me call Gran on my second day here. Of course, Linda had already called her and briefed her on my supposed mental breakdown. I had no doubt that she'd managed to fake hysterical anxiety well enough to convince Gran that I'd lost it completely; Gran was already four-fifths certain that I was nuts.

"Hi, Gran," I said.

"Arthur! My God, how are you?"

"I'm fine, Gran. It's a big mistake is all."

"A mistake? Your lady friend called me and told me what you'd done in London. Arthur, you need help."

"What did Linda say?"

"She said that you threatened to kill a coworker. She said you threatened to kill her . That you had a knife. Oh, Arthur, I'm so worried-"

"It's not true, Gran. She's lying to you."

"She told me you'd say that."

"Of course she did. She and Fede-a guy I worked with in London-they're trying to get rid of me. They had me locked up. I had a business deal with Fede, we were selling one of my ideas to a company in New Jersey. Linda talked him into selling to some people she knows in LA instead, and they conspired to cut me out of the deal. When I caught them at it, they got me sent away. Let me guess, she told you I was going to say this, too, right?"

"Arthur, I know-"

"You know that I'm a good guy. You raised me. I'm not nuts, OK? They just wanted to get me out of the way while they did their deal. A week or two and I'll be out again, but it will be too late. Do you believe that you know me better than some girl I met a month ago?"

"Of course I do, Arthur. But why would the hospital take you away if-"

"If I wasn't crazy? I'm in here for observation-they want to find out if I'm crazy. If they're not sure, then you can't be sure, right?"

"All right. Oh, I've been sick with worry."

"I'm sorry, Gran. I need to get through this week and I'll be free and clear and I'll come back to Toronto."

"I'm going to come down there to see you. Linda told me visitors weren't allowed, is that true?"

"No, it's not true." I thought about Gran seeing me in the ward amidst the pukers and the screamers and the droolers and the fondlers and flinched away from the phone. "But if you're going to come down, come for the hearing at the end of the week. There's nothing you can do here now."

"Even if I can't help, I just want to come and see you. It was so nice when you were here."

"I know, I know. I'll be coming back soon, don't worry."

If only Gran could see me now, on the infirmary examination table, in four-point restraint. Good thing she can't.

A doctor looms over me. "How are you feeling, Art?"

"I've had better days," I say, with what I hope is stark sanity and humor. Aren't crazy people incapable of humor? "I went for a walk and the door swung shut behind me."

"Well, they'll do that," the doctor says. "My name is Szandor," he says, and shakes my hand in its restraint.

"A pleasure to meet you," I say. "You're a doctor doctor, aren't you?"

"An MD? Yup. There're a couple of us around the place."

"But you're not a shrink of any description?"

"Nope. How'd you guess?"

"Bedside manner. You didn't patronize me."

Dr. Szandor tries to suppress a grin, then gives up. "We all do our bit," he says. "How'd you get up on the roof without setting off your room alarm, anyway?"

"If I tell you how I did it, I won't be able to repeat the trick," I say jokingly. He's swabbing down my shins now with something that stings and cools at the same time. From time to time, he takes tweezers in hand and plucks loose some gravel or grit and plinks it into a steel tray on a rolling table by his side. He's so gentle, I hardly feel it.

"What, you never heard of doctor-patient confidentiality?"

"Is that thing still around?"

"Oh sure! We had a mandatory workshop on it yesterday afternoon. Those are always a lot of fun."

"So, you're saying that you've got professional expertise in the keeping of secrets, huh? I suppose I could spill it for you, then." And I do, explaining my little hack for tricking the door into thinking that I'd left and returned to the room.

"Huh-now that you explain it, it's pretty obvious."

"That's my job-figuring out the obvious way of doing something."

And we fall to talking about my job with V/DT, and the discussion branches into the theory and practice of UE, only slowing a little when he picks the crud out of the scrape down my jaw and tugs through a couple of quick stitches. It occurs to me that he's just keeping me distracted, using a highly evolved skill for placating psychopaths through small talk so that they don't thrash while he's knitting their bodies back together.

I decide that I don't care. I get to natter on about a subject that I'm nearly autistically fixated on, and I do it in a context where I know that I'm sane and smart and charming and occasionally mind-blowing.

"...and the whole thing pays for itself through EZPass, where we collect the payments for the music downloaded while you're on the road." As I finish my spiel, I realize I've been keeping him distracted, standing there with the tweezers in one hand and a swab in the other.

"Wow!" he said. "So, when's this all going to happen?"

"You'd use it, huh?"

"Hell, yeah! I've got a good twenty, thirty thousand on my car right now! You're saying I could plunder anyone else's stereo at will, for free, and keep it, while I'm stuck in traffic, and because I'm a-what'd you call it, a super-peer?-a super-peer, it's all free and legal? Damn!"

"Well, it may be a while before you see it on the East Coast. It'll probably roll out in LA first, then San Francisco, Seattle..."

"What? Why?"

"It's a long story," I say. "And it ends with me on the roof of a goddamned nuthouse on Route 128 doing a one-man tribute to the Three Stooges."

Three days later, Art finally realized that something big and ugly was in the offing. Fede had repeatedly talked him out of going to Perceptronics's offices, offering increasingly flimsy excuses and distracting him by calling the hotel's front desk and sending up surprise massage therapists to interrupt Art as he stewed in his juices, throbbing with resentment at having been flown thousands of klicks while injured in order to check into a faceless hotel on a faceless stretch of highway and insert this thumb into his asshole and wait for Fede- who was still in fucking London! —to sort out the mess so that he could present himself at the Perceptronics Acton offices and get their guys prepped for the ever-receding meeting with MassPike.