Нил Стивенсон - Termination Shock

“Picked up by a ten-year-old Boy Scout at the front door and handed in to a cashier,” T.R. said.

The third posse member, correctly eschewing the use of firearms in such a fraught close-range melee, jumped on Squeegee Ninja’s back, obliging the latter to disentangle his weapon from number 2’s arm. He punched its handle back several times in reverse pool cue style, delivering powerful, rib-snapping, spleen-rupturing jabs to the assailant’s midsection, then shrugging free as number 3 collapsed back onto the pavement.

“Choppered to the nearest tertiary trauma center, critical but stable,” T.R. said.

Number 2 had been patting himself down like a man who has lost his car keys; he had no idea what had become of his gun. He took a wild swing at Squeegee Ninja, who dodged it. Then another. The third punch was never delivered; the guy drew his fist back but the move was so obviously telegraphed that Squeegee Ninja had time simply to plant the head of his weapon across the guy’s bicep, just above the elbow, freezing his arm. And leaving his face wide open for a double-handed butt-stroke with the squeegee’s opposite end. He fell on his back with a finality that elicited a round of light applause and some “woo!” from the enraptured Black Hat staff in their virtual meeting.

The guy with the Bug-Solv in his eyes had got to his knees. To his credit he was still observing correct trigger discipline; his cocked revolver was pointed straight up and his finger was laid alongside the cylinder. He had his face buried in the crook of his other arm. He lifted his head. If it made sense to describe a motion of the eyelids as violent, then he was blinking violently. He was trying to see something. His gun began to descend in the general direction of the blur he had identified as Squeegee Ninja. Who was looking the other way; but he pivoted as if he had eyes in the back of his head. With a curious little hop and skip, like a seventy-pound girl playing hopscotch, the big man took to the air, light as a tumbleweed, and lashed out with the squeegee in a two-handed home run swing that connected with the revolver and knocked it clean out of the man’s hand. It flew out of the frame. Had this been a real Hollywood movie, its trajectory from that moment on might have been lovingly captured in slo-mo from all sorts of camera angles as it spun through the air. Matters being what they were, however, everyone just had to put two and two together and use their imaginations a little bit to infer that it had taken a bad bounce, which had caused it to discharge: an inference made more than obvious by the detonation of the liquid propane truck a hundred yards downrange, currently refilling a large reservoir placed there for the convenience of T.R. Mick’s RV-driving customers. Which exploded too.

“No casualties, believe it or not,” T.R. said. “The driver of the propane truck was watching all this shit go down and had already taken cover.”

“He got away?” someone asked.

This elicited a guffaw from T.R. “He ain’t a criminal . He din’t do one single thing illegal . We don’t say of such a man, ‘he got away.’ We say, he took his leave.”

“In Burrito Guy’s truck?”

“A semi, yes. Burrito Guy pulled out when the LP tank exploded and drove to a safe spot on the far edge of the parking lot. Squeegee Ninja took his leave from the well-regulated militia at Pump 37G and went looking for the truck—eventually found it—and climbed in. Off they went.”

“Did you get a license plate?”

“I suppose we could ,” T.R. said, “and maybe we will if there’s a criminal investigation, and some local yokel D.A. sends us a subpoena. But I hope they just let sleeping dogs lie. The poor man was attacked. He defended himself. No one died. We have insurance. And when you have spent as much as I have, cumulatively, on insurance, nothing brings greater satisfaction than to lay a horrific claim on your insurer. The end.”

During this discussion the video had remained up, hanging in space, projected on a virtual screen—a rectangle hovering about ten feet in front of Rufus. It was frozen on the last frame, which was just a wall of billowing orange fire.

Now, of the score or so of persons attending this meeting, Rufus probably had the best view of it. The others—scattered around the world in hotel suites, conference rooms, departure lounges, or spare bedrooms—were in environments that were, by and large, more brightly lit and more cluttered. The same pixels were being displayed in their glasses as Rufus’s. But only Rufus had the advantage of being able to view those pixels in a dark place against a featureless matte backdrop. He noticed something. And for the first time in three months, he spoke during a meeting.

“Those your drones, T.R.?”

Silence for a few moments as people tried to identify the speaker. “That you, Red?” T.R. asked.

“Yes, sir. I was asking about the drones. Are those T.R. Mick’s equipment? Just hovering around the mobility center for security or whatever? Or someone else’s?”

“I’m not aware of any—” T.R. paused now for several seconds. “Well, ho-lee shit.”

“Just above and to the right of that Tesla,” someone confirmed.

T.R., or someone who had control of the video interface, zoomed and panned. The wall of fire occupied basically the whole frame of the video. Any object between it and the camera showed up as a crisp silhouette. This included objects that had been invisible until they had been backlit by the conflagration. The thing Rufus had noticed was a small quad-copter drone, hovering ten or twelve feet above the ground.

“There’s a second one off to the left, near the edge of the picture,” Rufus said.

The view panned leftward, seeming to move at great speed because it was so zoomed in. With a bit of hunting around, a second drone, just like the first one, became visible. It was harder to see because of how it was lit, but it was definitely there.

“Triangulating on Squeegee Ninja,” Rufus said. “Leastways that’s how it looks to me.”

“You think maybe the well-regulated militia got drones in the air to track the ‘Ay-rab terrorist’?” T.R. asked.

“I guess that’s . . . possible?” Rufus allowed. “If someone was real quick on his feet.”

There was a silence as everyone thought it through. During the time Squeegee Ninja was taking his dump, might some member of the cash register posse have run out to the parking lot and got a couple of drones in the air? Rufus could sense everyone swinging round to the opinion that this seemed unlikely.

“Or maybe,” T.R. speculated, “some hobbyist just happened to be playing with two identical drones out in the parking lot when all this happened?”

“Two that we know of, sir,” Rufus corrected him.

“Ha! You think there’s more we can’t see, Red?”

“The more the merrier.”

“Well! I only showed y’all this video as a little bit of light entertainment to wrap up the meeting and send y’all on your way with a bang and a chuckle,” T.R. said. “Thanks to Eagle Eyes here, seems we got a mystery on our hands.”

“Can we take it offline?” asked Tatum. “This is a T.R. Mick’s thing. It’s not related to any of our operations, is it?”

Rufus was thumbing a message to T.R.:

> If you get me access to the videos I will investigate.

> You got it T.R. texted back, even as he was saying out loud, “Hell no, it’s a thousand miles away from Flying S. You’re right, Tatum. This meeting is concluded.”

RIJSTTAFEL

India’s pissed off.”

This obviously wasn’t news to T.R., but it was enough to pull him away from his phone for a minute. He had just concluded some kind of virtual meeting in the conference room on the top floor of the T.R. and Victoria Schmidt Medical Pavilion. Willem and Amelia had been loitering in the reception area along with something like a dozen members of an Indonesian family who had come here to serve them dinner. Now they had all flooded through. Willem and T.R. retreated to a corner while the conference table was set and the dishes arranged.