Питер Уоттс - Gut Feelings

They can’t quite get the bloodstains off the pavement.

Not for want of trying. Not that they aren’t trying still. It’s been a good twenty minutes — fifteen since the ambulance has been and gone — and the bots and drones are still at it, rotary brushes scrubbing at a blur, nozzles spritzing iridescent chemicals onto the sidewalk. But the cement is just too porous, or the blood is just too stubborn, or Google’s custodial drones just don’t live up to the ad copy.

Out, damned spot . Marius Ghazali stares out through the window, allows himself a small sick smile. His knuckles sting at his sides, raw and oozing.

Everyone’s still out there. If anything there are more of them now, accreting around that first sparse smattering of onlookers who stood by while he vented his rage. The plastic barricades, thrown into place in the wake of his — episode — are keeping them at bay, but the gaps behind are filling. This could be an honest-to-God crowd before long even though there’s nothing to see here, not any more, move along, move along. One of the bystanders spies him through the glass, nudges her friend. Both flash him a thumbs-up.

His calf knots as the last vestiges of the taser charge tug at his motor nerves. He staggers, braces against the glass: floor to ceiling, wall to wall, a glorious invisible intelligent insulative ecofriendly solar-energy-collecting barrier that fits in perfectly with the garbage-collecting robots and the omnipresent cameras and the ubiquitous underground sensors infesting every square meter of this perfect creepy community in the heart of the city. A Bit of Heaven in the Depths of Hell — at least, that was the slogan doing the rounds at Quayside Management until someone with an actual conscience leaked the memo to the Oakville Beaver .

The Google logo towers above it all — atop this very building, in fact, in letters three meters high. Ghazali’s pretty sure it’s directly above him. He can’t see it from in here, but it — sticks in his mind.

It almost seemed to be smiling down at him the whole time.

His fangirls are shouting at him. Their mouths are moving, at least. Window must be soundproof in addition to its other miraculous properties. He turns away, surveys more immediate surroundings. He’s in some kind of conference room. Two doors: the one they dragged him in through (locked), the other leading to a tiny bathroom (ajar); an inactive smartpaint display on the wall between. A standing table dominates centre stage, a flat ovoid stretched along the room’s longitudinal axis at waist height. A Google Gamium sits on its polished surface like a plastic skull.

Not a fucking chair to be seen anywhere.

“Mr. Ghazali.”

The door’s already closing behind her as he turns. White, whippet-thin, maybe 180 centimeters. Startling green eyes under a brunette cap (chloroplast injections, Ghazali guesses). She waves one hand, and the window frosts magically to bright opacity. No more witnesses.

(But of course there are always witnesses, these days.)

“I’m Selma Hancock.” She carries an old-fashioned tablet in the crook of one arm, which seems a bit superfluous in light of the smart specs wrapped around her head, the glittering streams of data reflected in her eyes. “They want me to ask you some questions.”

“You police?”

She shakes her head. “Parameterization specialist. Here at Google.”

“You have a black belt or something?”

“Why do you ask?” Her voice level. Restrained.

“Just seems odd they’d send someone like you in alone with…” Ghazali closes his eyes. Sees blood and teeth and one wide, terrified eye fixed on his descending fist. Opens them.

“…someone like me,” he finishes.

But that wasn’t me. It wasn’t.

Until it was.

“We’re not alone,” she says. “Not really. You should probably keep that in mind.”

Ghazali takes a breath. “I think I should see a lawyer before I talk to anyone.”

“I understand your reluctance, Marius. May I call you Marius?” The corners of her mouth tighten; her eyes remain fixed on the tablet. She taps the earpiece on her specs. “They’re telling me to be informal.”

“I just beat the shit out of one of your employees. I’m not really in a position to take offence over boundary issues.”

She doesn’t smile. “His name’s Travis, in case you’re interested. Good guy. Friend of mine.”

I’m sorry , Ghazali wants to say, but what kind of sense would that make? “Is he okay?”

Hancock keeps her eyes on the tablet. “How could he be? You beat him half to death. Someone you didn’t even know. A complete stranger.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“You ordered Thai two nights ago. Off the back of a Rosa’s truck. Crispy prawns, krill massaman, pork satay. Yeah, we’re sure.”

“Chicken satay,” Ghazali says. “Your spybots fucked up.” A half-hearted half-assed reminder that guilt goes both ways, but he doesn’t even believe it himself at this point.

“We weren’t watching, if that’s what you mean. SocNet algos predicted it from the upstream tertiaries eight hours in advance.” Finally she lifts her eyes. “They were wrong about the satay?”

“What — ”

“Listen. Marius. Big tough boy like you must know the depth of the shit you’re in. What might surprise you is how easily you could get out of it again. We may be able to keep the police out of it entirely.”

He blinks. “Why would you want to do that?”

“ I don’t, necessarily. They send me in here, they tell me to make you an offer. There might be extenuating circumstances.”

“They.”

“My bosses. Their algos. If you cooperate.” She grabs the Gamium off the table, holds it out. “No promises.”

He eyes the helmet, keeps his hands pointedly at his sides. “You want me to play games.”

“We want to understand what happened. What was — going through your mind.”

“That thing reads minds?”

“That’s how it works.”

“What it says in the manual,” Ghazali remembers ( everyone has a Gamium), “is that it works by pushing pixels around in response to arbitrary brainwave patterns. And you have to train it first.”

“In default mode, sure. But it’s easy enough to rewrite the firmware remotely, and the hardware’s got horsepower to spare. It’s how we keep our upgrades so affordable.” She effects a small, brittle smile. “Sony makes you buy a whole new rig.”

He takes the helmet, turns it over. Its inner surface is lined with spiderwebs. Tiny washers bead the interstices. “So it’s what, now? Lie detector?”

“We could use it that way, if you wanted to deny doing something that’s been documented in realtime hi-def from six different angles. But we’re really less interested in what you say than your emotional responses when you say it.”

This does not make sense. In what kind of alternate fantasy world does an unemployed brother from the Cinder Block get to beat the shit out of a white collar for the price of some half-assed MRI scan?

In Googleville, apparently.

The Gamium prickles slightly as he sets it on his scalp, like a sweater afflicted with static cling.

“So.” Hancock’s tablet brightens in her hand. “You were just — passing through. On your way to meet Ezra Keogh, over at St. Lawrence Market.”

“How— ” Never mind…

“You ran into Travis going the other way, and you attacked him. Why?”

Ghazali tries to summon some echo of the astonishing rage Travis provoked in him. All he finds is a sort of clammy, ball-clenching horror at his own actions. I could spend the next ten years in jail.