Vernor Vinge - Rainbows End

Besides… second thoughts were percolating up. How could I be so stupid as to let her into my wearable ? He ran the Epiphany integrity check a couple of times. Widgets of purity floated in the air above his taco. Epiphany said he was clean; of course, if he'd been totally perverted that's exactly what it would say. Damnation. I don't want to fry-clean my clothes. Not again !

Especially in this case. He looked at the golden enum: Robert Gu's own direct identifier. If he took the right approach, he would finally have his thesis. Not just any ordinary thesis. Sharif considered Robert Gu to be from the highest rank of modern literature, up there with Williams and Cho.

And Annie Blandings thought Gu was God.

11

Wearable computers, what a concept. IBM PC meets Epiphany-brand high-fashion. In fact, Robert might have mistaken his new wardrobe for ordinary clothes. True, the shirts and pants were not a style he favored. There were embroidered patterns both inside and out. But the embroidery was more noticeable to the touch than the eye; Juan Orozco had to show him special views to reveal the net of microprocessors and lasers. The main problem was the damn contact lenses. He had to put them on every morning and then wear them all day. There were constant twinkles and flashes in his eyes. But with practice, he got control of that. He felt a moment of pure joy the first time he managed to type a query on a phantom keyboard and view the Google response floating in the air before him… There was a feeling of power in being able to draw answers out of thin air.

And then there was what Juan Orozco called "ensemble coding."

A week passed. Robert was practicing with his beginner's outfit, trying to repeat the coding tricks Juan had shown him. For the most part, even the simplest gestures didn't work when he first tried them. But he would flail and flail — and when the command did work, the success gave him a pitiful spike of joy and he worked even harder. Like a boy with a new computer game. Or a trained rat.

When the phone call came, he thought he was having a stroke. There were bright flashes before his eyes, and a faraway buzzing sound. The buzzing broke into words: "… very muzzzz like to… interview you zzzz'xx …"

Aha! Spam, or some kind of reporter.

"Why would I want to give an interview?"

" Bzzzt a short int… view."

"Even a short one." Robert's reply was a reflex. It had been years since he'd had the opportunity to dump on a journalist.

The light was still a glaring shapelessness, but when Robert straightened his collar, the voice became sharp and perfect. "Sir, my name is Sharif, Zulfikar Sharif. The interview would be for my Lit-in-English thesis."

Robert squinted and shrugged, squinted again. And then suddenly he got it right: his visitor was standing in the middle of the bedroom. I have to tell Juan about this ! It was his first real three-dimensional success, and everything that the kid had claimed about retinal painting. Robert stood and stepped to the side, looking behind the visitor. The image was so solid, so complete. Hmm . And yet the visitor cast shadows contrary to the real lighting. I wonder whose fault that is ?

His dark-skinned visitor — Indian? Pakistani? his voice held a South Asian lilt — was still talking. "Please don't say no, sir! Interviewing you would be my great honor. You are a resource for all humanity."

Robert walked back and forth in front of the visitor. He was still boggled by the medium of the message.

"Just a small amount of your precious time, sir! That's all I ask. And — " He looked around Robert's room, probably seeing what was truly there. Robert had not had a chance to set up false backgrounds. Juan had been going to show him that yesterday, but they had gotten sidetracked by Robert's side of the bargain — tutoring the kid in English. Poor, subliterate Juan. This Sharif fellow on the other hand: How bright are graduate students these days ?

This particular graduate student was looking more and more desperate. His gaze caught on something behind Robert. "Ah, books! You are one who still treasures the real thing."

Robert's "bookcases" were made from plastic slats and cardboard boxes. But they held all the books he had rescued from the basement. Some of them — the Kipling — he would never have bothered with in the old days. But these were all he had now. He looked back at Sharif. "Indeed I do. Your point, Mr. Sharif?"

"I just thought — it means we share the same values. By helping me, you'll be advancing those noble passions." He paused — listening to some inner voice? Since his lessons with Juan, Robert had become suspicious of people listening to their inner voices. "Perhaps we could strike a bargain, sir. I would give almost anything for a few hours of your opinions and reminiscence. I would be happy to be your personal 411 agent. I'm an expert at such services; it's how I pay my way at OSU. I can guide you through the contemporary world."

"I already have a tutor." And when he considered the flippancy, he felt a twinge of surprise. In a sense it was true: he had Juan.

Another significant silence. "Oh. Him." Sharif — his image, perfect except for the misplaced shadows and the shoes that disappeared a quarter inch into the floor — walked around Robert. To get a closer look at the books? Suddenly, Robert had even more questions for Juan Orozco. But Sharif was talking again: "These are permanently printed? Not just-in-time chapbooks?"

"Of course!"

"Wonderful. You know… I could show you around the UCSD library."

Millions of volumes.

"I can go down there myself, anytime." But so far he hadn't quite dared. Robert looked at his little library. In the middle ages, a rich man might have so many books. Now people with books were rare once again. But at UCSD, there was a real, physical library. And going with his graduate student… that would be a little like the old days.

He looked back at Sharif. "When?"

"Why not now?"

Robert would have to let Juan Orozco know this afternoon's session was off. He felt an instant of uncharacteristic embarrassment. Juan was going to show him how to do glance searches, and Robert had promised Juan scansion. Robert pushed the regrets aside. "Let's go, then," he said.

Robert took a car down to campus. For some reason, he couldn't get a clear image of Sharif inside the automobile. There was just his voice chattering away, asking Robert for his opinion of everything they saw, offering opinions and facts whenever Robert seemed even faintly puzzled.

Robert had driven past the outskirts of campus before; today he would see what the place had finally become. Coming out of Fallbrook, there were the usual subdivisions, unexceptional and dull. But just north of campus, he drove past endless gray-green buildings. Here and there, windowless walkways stretched across the canyons.

"Bioscience labs," Sharif cheerfully explained. "They're mostly underground." He fed Robert's Epiphany with pointers to images and details. Ah. So these doorless, windowless structures were not some twenty-first-century experiment in communal living. In fact, there weren't more than a few dozen people inside them. The connecting corridors were for biosample transport.

Monstrous things might gestate in these buildings and in the caverns below. But salvation, too. Robert gave them a little salute. Reed Weber's heavenly minefield was created in places like these.

These were the anterooms to UCSD. He braced himself for unintelligible futurism: the main campus. His car drove down Torrey Pines Road. The intersections were almost as he remembered, though there were no traffic lights and no stopping. Cross traffic interleaved with smooth and eerie grace. Someday I must write a lighthearted piece about the secret life of automobiles . He had never seen one stop for much longer than it took passengers to get off and on. Out in the desert, his car had departed almost immediately, stranding him. But by the time he got back to the road, another had pulled up. The devices were always moving. He imagined them circling the county, forever maneuvering so that no customer ever need wait more than a few moments. But what do they do at night, when business is scarce ? That would be the topic of his poem. Were there hidden garages, hidden car parks? There had to be garages for repair work — or at least equipment swapouts. But maybe there was no other stopping. This was the stuff of both poetry and futurism: Maybe at night when demand fell and they otherwise would have to sleep without profit in some empty lot, maybe then they conspired to clump together like Japanese transformer toys… to become freight trucks hauling cargo that was too big for UP/Express.