Рич Ларсон - Tomorrow Factory - Collected Fiction

At the bit where Pacquette yanks out a miniature version of himself, bald head and all, and gives it that look of grim satisfaction, even a ChillGirl module couldn’t stop her shoulders shaking.

Her pingback scrolled across my vision: Oh my fucking god. It’s like an Escher painting. Then she turned in her seat and flashed the whitest smile and sexiest thumbs up I’ve ever seen.

She has these ice-blue irises, so I was barely comprehending when she asked if I was going to Hamza Hamidi’s party on Saturday.

“He just pinged me and Kolette in the caf yesterday with an invite,” she said. “I think he latched some kind of mixtape to it. But it must be, like, a joke rap thing?”

Of course she’d gotten pinged yesterday; yesterday she was wearing tight tight ciggy jeans and this strappy shirt that scrolled Abercrombie slogans down her bare back.

“Yeah, I’m going with my bru Dyl and some, uh, other brus,” I said, rubbing my buzzcut, hoping the fade still looked sharp. “Should be raw, right?”

Grody lies. Hamza Hamidi, AKA IllConsci3nce, is the swankest kid in the twelfth grade, rich enough to excuse his shitty blip-hop mixtapes and the truly taintly jumpshot he displays whenever he plays a pick-up game. Rumor has it he’s running a top-notch SilverTongue module, which doesn’t hurt either.

Me, I’m running UnderTheRadar like every other broke motherfucker whose parents won’t/can’t spring for a swanker personality module. And I mean, UnderTheRadar works fine. It edits out stammers and helps deflect teacher questions so you don’t end up sounding like a shitwit in front of the whole class. It even autopatches to MovingOnUp when we hit eleventh.

But at the moment, I’m a tenth grade scrub, and tenth grade scrubs do not roll up to twelfth grade parties unless they’re connected. Or, you know, a good-looking girl. Case in point being Wendee. Back to that.

“Yeah, should be heaps raw,” she agreed, looking impressed, or maybe just relieved. “I was sketched it would be all seniors, you know?” She smiled, then gave me an up-and-down. “You going to run any add-ons? I might go Flirty.”

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Right after class ended, I gave Wendee what I hoped was a smooth guy nod, then split to go find Dyl. There was no way I was going to slip a chance to get with arguably the most supermodel girl of our grade, but also no way I was going to crash the party of Hamza Hamidi, AKA YungMon3y, without backup.

Which pretty much brings us to now, which is me and Dyl riding the bus crosstown because Hamza Hamidi, AKA HizzyB3ats, lives in Signet Cove, right up on the new artificial lake. The bus drops me and Dyl about a block off. It’s 9:48 and November, so the sun’s long gone. The burbs are lit up with those spindly Glowtrees that rich people seem to like, even though they never survive the first hard frost.

Me and Dyl follow the traffic, which is split between inherited junk cars and shiny gifted pick-ups with lift-kits and tint, most booming the same Top 40 mash-up. You can tell who’s been pregaming hardest, because they all hang out their windows cussing at the autodrive, which always goes level with the speed limit and never tries to drift icy corners.

The parade of cars gets thicker and thicker as we get closer and closer, and I feel like I’m going to burst my skin, I really do. The air’s chilly, electric; me and Dyl are talking shit in small packets of steam as we walk, not about any particular subject, just animated shit-talk that Maestro 2.0 is suggesting will loosen up our jaws, calibrate chest voice, get us amped up.

Maestro also vetoes pinging Wendee an are-you-there-yet.

As we join the stream heading for the big behemoth house, Dyl says what we’re both thinking. “Time to lamprey someone, bru.”

We spot our target simultaneously: a twelfth-grade girl coming back from a booze run, whose face I recognize from cafeteria wallscreens: Ash Rigsby, captain of the girl’s soccer squad and star player on the volleyball team. She’s got sun-blonde hair and muscly calves and is repping an Edmonton FC jersey. Normally I don’t try talking to seniors, never mind heaps popular ones, but Maestro says go and we’re already moving.

We close up right behind her, watching her balance a sixer of Coors and a bottle of Moscato, Socialight buzzing away to someone inside. Then Maestro kicks in and all of a sudden I can not only see what mod she’s running, which is LifeOfTheParty, but the whole of her digital life laid out in front of me. Last Eyespy she recorded, last MLS highlight she posted, last flick she downloaded, everything.

Me and Dyl swap this look, like, this shit is so illegal, then I airtalk, loud: “I cannot fucking believe you’re sleeping on Edmonton again, bru. They got the best backline, best keeper, best coach. Simple as shit.”

Up ahead, Ash’s head turns just a bit.

“Overrated,” Dyl says, equal loud, flourishing his hat. “Vancouver all the way.”

I flick back to Ash’s sports feed and find the highlight reel from last night. “Did you not see Exum make that fucking save yesterday? He flew, bru. Flew.”

Candy from a baby, motherfucker. Ash Rigsby spins around, eyes shiny with booze and emotion, and evangelizes the whole way up to the step about Edmonton winning the Western Conference for sure this year, for-fucking-sure. Dyl rolls out token resistance; I keep the conversation snapping with quick-wiki win stats. By the time we’re at the door, facing down one of those short-but-wide gym monkeys who always nominate themselves bouncer, Edmonton FC’s biggest fan has an arm slung around each of us like we’re the three best friends in the whole fucking world.

The porch is vibrating with blip-hop as the faux-bouncer looks us over, and it feels like my internal organs are shaking right with it. This is the moment of truth, and if we get bounced here then I dropped all my money for nothing and Wendee will flit off out of my league and stay there forever. Or at least all school year, which is the same thing.

“Let ‘em in, Mack,” Ash beams. “They’re chill little shits.”

And then we’re inside, and I can breathe again. There’s a whole sea of shoes and coats filling up the entryway wall to wall, and when I tune into the general VR channel I see most people remembered to tag their shit. Someone also did up guide ribbons snaking off into the house at chest-level, a bright red contrail to the Beer Pong, amber to the Kegs, lime green to the Barf Bathroom, et cetera. I have to turn down the music in my head to a tolerable level.

“Okay, Romeo,” Dyl says, slapping my shoulder half for emphasis, half to balance while he kicks off his Osirises. “You go find that star-crossed vagina. I’m going to go tool someone at pong.”

“Whoa, hey, what if I need a wing?” I ask.

Dyl smirks, taps his Socialight with one finger. “You got one.” Then he’s off, reeling himself along the red ribbon into the crush of people. I lean down and unlace my shoes while Maestro 2.0 takes electronic stock. Everyone’s running at least a Kameleon, with a good sprinkling of ChillGirls and ChillBoys to balance out the LifeOfThePartys and Buttaflys.

But nobody’s got what I got.

Before Ash jaunts off to Fridge For Drinks, she tells me how Hamza’s parents left a little housekeeper module in their home security system, but he had someone hack it before the plane even took off. Now all kinds of fun shit that would fry a babysitter AI’s innocent little mind is going down in the living room:

Stoners posted up rolling kites on the coffee table, people fucking upstairs sending fleshflashes right to the wallscreens so anywhere you look you see shadows humping, the little cleaning robot scurrying around with sixers of Stella taped around it for anyone to snag.