Vernor Vinge - Rainbows End

Huynh — > Hanson: Borrowing robots is one thing, Sheila. But lots of these are going back as junk.

Sheila was at the other end of the front. It looked like she was trying to get the robots to advance into the Knights and Librarians. On Tim's end, the Greater Scooch-a-mout had already accomplished some of that by dancing toward the edge of the real human players.

Hanson — > Huynh: Not to worry! Management is happy! Take a look at the publicity, Tim.

His coworkers and the virtual thousands pushed forward. In the network view… jeez, GenGen was getting coverage like you couldn't pay for, better than in the twentieth century when millions were forced to watch just what the few had decided was Important. There were backbone routers in the UCSD area that had run out of capacity! That wouldn't last long, since there were endless ad hoc routers and dark fiber everywhere. But the whole world was here tonight.

Step by step, the Scoochis advanced.

"We want our floor space!"

"We want our library!"

"And most of all, we want our REAL books!"

Belief circles normally competed from within, based on their own popularity. Here, tonight, was a grand exception: belief circles fighting each other directly for attention and respect. In minutes they might burn up months of creativity, but reach an audience beyond all their earlier dreams.

And whoever was driving the Greater Scooch-a-mout chatted with Huynh directly:

Greater Scooch-a-mout — > Lesser Scooch-a-mout: Your mechs are the thing, my man! Bring them on!

Okay! Huynh fired up the other forklift. He often dreamed of kicking ass with one of these monsters. He walked carefully through friendly lines, drawing the smaller robots along behind him. From somewhere across the world, Scoochi artists draped the forklift every bit as brilliantly as the Greater Scooch-a-mout. But this vision was mercurial as smoke: Huynh's forklift was tricked out as Mind Sum, the ambiguous spirit that sometimes helped Scooch-a-mout when enemies were at their wiliest. Its vapors both lagged and led the real device. Dozens of helpers and helper programs made sure that the effect was always in place. The forklift's hull was dark composite plastic. Unless you looked carefully in the real view, you couldn't be sure just where the robot might really be.

Tim Huynh took advantage of all this, stomping like a steel mist across the bottish battle zone, high-fiving the Greater Scooch-a-mout… and treading with ambiguous location toward the Knights and Librarians. The Scoochi chant boomed from the forklift's speakers:

"We want our floor space!"

"We want our library!"

"And most of all, we want our REAL books!"

The advance was a combination of beauty, surprise, and physical intimidation. The Hacek forces fell back and Huynh's chirps and salsipueds hustled forward to claim new ground. But Katie Rosenbaum's critters still outnumbered them and were far more agile. The spider bots raced backwards, keeping a battle zone between the contending human forces.

Smale — > Night Crew: Keep after them!

As Huynh walked forward behind his forklift Mind Sum, he was also looking down from above and tracking the reviews. There were more than a hundred million people watching what the two belief circles had created. Not quite a game, not quite a work of art, this was a contest where you won with imagination and calculation and impudence. So far, the world thought that the two sides were matched as to imagination, but the Scoochis were way ahead on calculation and impudence. They had created real physical destruction — all around and among real humans!

Yard by yard, the battle moved round the library. The Scoochis now occupied parts of the south esplanade, the principal axis of the campus. On the roads around campus, cars were bringing people from all over town, the physical counterpart of the far more numerous virtuals. Forty percent of the backbone routers were saturated. The audience had surged past two hundred million. Hundreds of thousands were players, tricked out with new imagery from the depths of Hacek and Scoochi design. The participants, real and virtual, spread out around the central hub that was the university library. Seen from journalist viewpoints a thousand feet up, the conflict looked like a strange spiral galaxy, its arms glowing the brightest where the battle was the fiercest.

There were others present, invisible but for the reporting of the entertainment-trade journalists: the movie and game people, maybe a hundred thousand professionals. Some watched the watchers, sampling and polling. Others were down in the bottish battles, collecting designs. He could see the spoor of SpielbergRowling, GameHappenings, Rio Magic, and the big Bollywood studios.

Tim Huynh could see more. After all, he was running GenGen equipment. He could see nets that merged with the background, collecting and collecting — then subtly affecting. Those must belong to the Fantasists Guild, the richest artists' cooperative in the world. (Their motto: "We don't need no stinking middlemen!")

And of course the police were here, a half-dozen jurisdictions from campus cops up to the FBI.

Greater Scooch-a-mout — > Lesser Scooch-a-mout: Hey, my man! We have ten minutes to win belief and decision. Then they're going to start shutting us down.

Alfred watched it all from under Pilchner Hall. Rabbit's riot had emptied the bio labs. The Indo-European inspection equipment was in place, and already sending back results (faked results, but that was Alfred's doing). The stooges who had installed that equipment were now well away from the GenGen area, off where their eventual arrest would provoke diversionary suspicions. But —

"We need at least fifteen minutes more," said Alfred. The faked data stream from the investigation would complete sooner than that, but cleaning up and getting out would take additional time.

Rabbit shrugged. "Don't worry, old fellow. I told Huynh ten minutes just to keep him on his toes. Even after the campus police crack down, you'll have another half hour before the GenGen crew begins to trickle back underground."

Mitsuri — > Braun, Vaz: I think Rabbit is right about the timing. His library operation is a masterpiece. We couldn't have organized a distraction like this without pressing every red button in the Americans' security apparatus.

Braun — > Mitsuri, Vaz: The riot has grown too large. The traffic still blocked their mobiles. Without sufficient mechs on-site, they hadn't been able to fully control Pilchner Hall — and two unwelcome children had created the first real problem of the evening. Now one of those children lay unconscious by the caisson, right where Alfred had brought him down.

Vaz glanced at where Rabbit sat on the edge of the pit, its furry feet dangling into the dark. "What about the girl, Rabbit? Right now she is running around in the tunnels, out of control."

Rabbit smiled broadly. "So call me the lord god of unintended consequences. When things get complicated, there are side effects, and Miri Gu is just one of them. You're the Local Honcho. Why don't you go after her?"

Braun — > Mitsuri, Vaz: No. That would put you well outside of our contingency plans.

In fact, Alfred was tempted. Instead, he had sent down just one mobile to track the girl. It might be enough to distract her. And if she caught up with the stooges, why then they had another option available, something that should surprise Rabbit. Out loud, Vaz said, "I don't think so. Do you have any other suggestions?"

"The obvious, old fellow: Be flexible, like me. Who knows what opportunities may develop? You can't locate Miri Gu, but big deal. That must mean she's nowhere that interests you and your friends, right?" He waggled his ears inquisitively.