James Kelly - Rewired - The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology

Bash ripped off the smart band-aid he had applied while shaving, and the image of the Masqueleros on Dagny’s proteopape swung crazily to track the movement.

“Dagny!” Bash yelled into the band-aid. “This has gone far enough! You’ve had your fun at my expense. Now give me your current password so I can make proteopape secure again.”

“Come and get it,” taunted Dagny. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I will!”

With that bold avowal, Bash furiously twisted the band-aid, causing the image of the Masqueleros on Dagny’s proteopape to shatter. On the monitor screen she appeared unconcerned, lolling back among her cushions like the Queen of Sheba.

Bash turned to Tito. “Lend me a phone and your Segway. I’m going to nail this troublemaker once and for all.”

“Some of us’ll go with you, pard.”

“No, you stay here. Dagny won’t react well to intimidation by a bunch of strangers. And besides, I need the Masqueleros to keep on spying on her and feed me any updates on her actions. All I can hope is that she’ll listen to me and abandon this insane vendetta. If she doesn’t — Well, I’m not sure what I’ll do.”

“No problemo, fizz.”

Someone handed Bash a phone. He downloaded his identity into it, then established an open channel to Harnnoy. After tucking the phone into the neckline of his shirt, allowing him to speak and be spoken to hands-free, Bash darted from the underground room.

Bash made it as far as Killian Court before the first of Dagny’s attacks commenced.

On all the canvases of the amateur painters, on all the individual sheets of proteopape held by the idling students, Bash’s face appeared, displacing laboriously created artworks, as well as the contents of books, magazines and videos. (Dagny had unearthed a paparazzo’s image of Bash that made him look particularly demented.) And from the massed speakers in the proteopape pages boomed this warning in a gruff male voice:

“Attention! This is a nationwide alert from Homeland Security. All citizens should immediately exert extreme vigilance for the individual depicted here. He is wanted for moral turpitude, arrogant ignorance, and retrogressive revanchism. Approach him with caution, as he may bite.”

This odd yet alarming message immediately caused general consternation to spread throughout the quadrangle. Bash turned up his shirt collar, hunched down his head and hurried toward the street. But he had not reckoned with the kites.

Homing in on his phone, the co-opted kites began to dive-bomb Bash. Several impacted the ground around him, crumpling with a noise like scrunching cellophane, but one scored a direct hit on his head, causing him to yelp. His squeal attracted the eyes of several onlookers, and someone shouted, “There he is!”

Bash ran.

He thought briefly of abandoning his phone, but decided not to. He needed to stay in touch with the Masqueleros. But more crucially, giving up his phone would achieve no invisibility.

Bash was moving through a saturated I 2environment. There was no escaping proteopape. Every smart surface — from store windows to sunglasses, from taxi rooftop displays to billboards, from employee nametags to vending machines — was a camera that would track him in his dash across town to the Paramount Theater. Illicitly tapping into all these sources, utilizing common yet sophisticated pattern recognition, sampling and extrapolative software, Dagny would never lose sight of her quarry. Bash might as well have had cameras implanted in his eyeballs.

Out on Mass Ave, Bash faced no interception from alarmed citizens. Apparently the false security warning had been broadcast only in Killian Court. But surely Dagny had further tricks up her striped sleeves.

He spoke into his dangling phone. “What’s she doing now?”

Harnnoy’s voice returned an answer. “Noodling around with her pape. She’s got her back to the camera, so we can’t see what kind of scripts she’s running.”

“Okay, thanks. I’m hitting the road now.”

Once aboard the Segway, Bash headed back toward downtown Boston.

He came to a halt obediently at the first red light, chafing at the delay. But something odd about the engine noise of the car approaching behind him made Bash look over his shoulder.

The car — a 2029 Vermoulian with proteopape windows — was not slowing down.

In a flash, Bash realized what was happening.

Dagny had edited out both the traffic light and Bash’s scooter from the driver’s interior display.

Bash veered his Segway to the right, climbing the curb, and the Vermoulian zipped past him with only centimeters to spare. In the middle of the intersection it broadsided another car. Luckily, the crash of the two lightweight urban vehicles, moving at relatively low speeds, resulted in only minor damages, although airbags activated noisily.

Bash drove down the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians, and continued around the accident.

Things were getting serious. No longer was Dagny content merely to harass Bash. Now she was involving innocent bystanders in her mad quest for revenge.

His ire rising, Bash crossed the Charles River. Beneath the bridge, huge jubilant crowds had assembled for the Dragon Boat races.

Bash took several wrong turns. Dagny had changed the street signs, misnaming avenues along his entire route and producing a labyrinth of new oneway streets. After foolishly adhering to the posted regulations for fear of getting stopped by some oblivious rule-bound cop, Bash abandoned all caution and just raced past snarled traffic down whatever avenue he felt would bring him most quickly to Washington Street.

Now Bash began to see his face everywhere, in varying sizes, surmounted or underlined by dire warnings. WANTED FOR CULTURAL ASSASSINATION, GUILTY OF SQUANDERING ARTISTIC CAPITAL, MASTERMIND IN FELONIOUS ASSAULT ON VISIONARIES….

The absurd charges made Bash see red. He swore aloud, and Harnnoy said, “What’d I do, pard?”

“Nothing, nothing. Dagny still at the Paramount?”

“Verdad, compañero.”

As he approached the Common, Bash noted growing crowds of gleeful pedestrians. What was going on….?

The Dragon Boat Festival. Chinatown must be hosting parallel celebrations. Well, okay. The confusion would afford Bash cover —

A sheet of proteopape — spontaneously windblown, or aimed like a missile? — sailed up out of nowhere and wrapped Bash’s head. He jerked the steering grips before taking his hands entirely off them to deal with the obstruction to his vision, and the Segway continued homeostatically on its new course to crash into a tree.

Bash picked himself up gingerly. The paper had fallen away from his face. Angrily, he crumpled it up and stuffed it into his pocket. He hurt all over, but no important body part seemed broken. The scooter was wrecked. Luckily, he hadn’t hit anyone. Concerned bystanders clumped around him, but Bash brusquely managed to convince them to go away.

Harnnoy said, “I caught the smashup on the phone camera, Bash. You okay?”

“Uh, I guess. Sorry about totaling your ride. I’m going on foot now.”

As Bash scurried off, he witnessed the arrival of several diligent autonomes converging on the accident. He accelerated his pace, fearful of getting corralled by the authorities before he could deal with Dagny.

Downtown Crossing was thronged, the ambient noise like a slumber party for teenage giants. The windows of Filene’s claimed that Bash was a redactive splice between a skunk, a hyena and a jackal. As Dagny’s interventions failed to stop him, her taunts grew cruder. She must be getting desperate. Bash was counting on her to screw up somehow. He had no real plan otherwise.