You might choose to detect those rays with good specs, or access the Public Safety feeds. Citizens may watch the watchers-or so the Big Deal proclaimed. But few paid attention to an ottodog.
Tor veered away in distaste, not for the security beast, but its DARKTIDE SERVICES fur-emblem. Back in Sandego, these creatures only sniffed for dangerous stuff-explosives, toxins, plus a short list of hookerpeps and psychotrops. But Albuquerque’s cops were privatized… and prudishly aggressive.
A week into her “human interest” assignment, Tor had a new sense of balkanized America. It started upon stepping off the cruise zep, when a Darktide agent sent her to use a public shower, because her favorite body scent-legal in California-too closely matched a pheromonic allure-compound that New Mexico banned. Well, God bless the Thirty-First Amendment and the Restoration of Federalism Act.
Still, after checking into the Radisson, then departing for her appointment on foot, Tor admitted-Albuquerque had a certain TwenCen charm. Take the bustling automotive traffic. Lots of cars-alkies, sparkies, and even retro stinkers-jostled and honked at intersections where brash-colored billboards and luminous adverts proved inescapable, because they all blared on channel one… the layer you can’t turn off because it’s real. Ethnic restaurants, foodomats, biosculpt salons and poesy parlors clustered in old-fashioned minimalls, their signs beckoning with bright pigments or extravagant neon, in living textures no VR could imitate. It all made Tor both glad and wary to be on foot, instead of renting an inflatable cab from hotel concierge.
“It’s all rather ironic,” she murmured, taking oral notes while doing a slow turn at one intersection. “In cities with unlimited virt, there’s been a general toning down of visual clutter at level one. L.A. and Seattle seem demure… almost bucolic, with simple, dignified signage. Why erect a billboard when people have their specs erase it from view? Here in the heartland though, many don’t even wear specs! So all the commerce lures and come-ons crowd into the one stratum no one can avoid.
“If you’re nostalgic for the garish lights of Olde Time Square, come to the high desert. Come to Albuquerque.”
There, that snip oughta rank some AA pod score, with sincerity-cred her fans expected. Though all this bustle kind of overwhelmed a poor city girl-with no volume settings or brightness sliders to tone it all down. Yet, people here seemed to like the tumult. Perhaps they really were a hardier breed.
Vive les differences… the catch phrase of an era.
Of course there was some virt. Only a trog would refuse things like overlay mapping. Tor’s best route to her destination lay written on the sidewalk-or rather, on the inside of her specs-in yellow bricks she alone perceived. She could also summon person-captions for those strolling nearby. Only here, they charged a small voyeur tax on every lookup!
Come on. A levy for nametags? Ain’t the world a village?
The trail of ersatz yellow bricks led her past three intersections where signals flashed and motorists still clutched steering wheels. She had to dodge around a farmer whose carrybot was burdened by sacks of Nitro-Fix perennial wheat seed, then a cluster of Awfulday traumatics, murmuring outside the local shelter. A drug store’s virtisement aggressively leaped at Tor, offering deals on oxytocin, vasopressin, and tanks of hydrogen-sulfide gas. Do I really look that depressed? She wondered, blinking the presumptuous advert away.
Out of habit, Tor dropped back into reporter-mode, no longer aloud, but subvocalizing into her boswell-recorder.
“For 99 percent of human existence, people lived in tribes or hamlets where you knew every face. The rare stranger provoked fear or wonder. Over a lifetime, you’d meet a few thousand people, tops-about the number of faces, names, and impressions that most humans can easily recall. Evolution supplies only what we need.
“Today you meet more folks than your ancestors could imagine… some in passing. Some for a crucial instant. Others for tangled decades. Biology can’t keep up. Our overworked temporal lobes cannot “know” the face-name-reps of ten billion people!”
A warning laser splashed the ground before a distracted walker, who jumped back from rushing traffic. Tor heard giggles. Some preteens in specs waggled fingers at the agitated pedestrian, clearly drawing shapes around the hapless adult on some VR tier they thought perfectly private. In fact, Tor had ways to find their mocking captions, but she just smiled. In a bigger city, disrespectful kids were less blatant. Tech-savvy grown-ups had ways of getting even.
“Where was I? Oh, yes… our biological memories couldn’t keep up.
“So, we augmented with passports, credit cards, and cash-crude totem-substitutes for old-fashioned reputation, so strangers could make deals. And even those prosthetics failed in the Great Heist.
“So, your bulky wallet went online. Eyes and lobes, augmented by ais and nodes. The Demigod Effect. Deus ex machina. And reputation became once again tied to instant recognition. Ever commit a crime? Renege a debt? Gossip carelessly or viciously? A taint may stain your vaura, following you from home to street corner. No changing your name or do-overs in a new town. Especially if people tune to judgmental percepts… or if their Algebra of Forgiveness differs from yours.
“So? We take it for granted… till you let it hit you. We became demigods, only to land back in the village.”
This must be why MediaCorp sent her doing viewpoint stories across a continent. So their neo reporter might reevaluate her smug, coastal-urban assumptions. To see why millions preferred nostalgia over omniscience. Heck, even Wesley expressed a sense of wistfulness in his art. A vague sureness that things used to be better.
Passing thought of Wesley made Tor tremble. Now his messages flooded with vows to fly out and meet her in D.C. No more vapid banter about a remote relationship via link-dolls. This time-serious talk about their future. Hope flared, almost painful, that she would see him at the zep port, after this journey’s final leg.
Tor’s golden path ended before a gray sandstone building. ATKINS CENTER FOR EMPATHIC AUGMENTATION was the benign title for a program that sparked riots back in Charleston, before transplanting to New Mexico. Here, just two desultory protesters kept vigil, letting IP placards do the shouting-pushing the legal limits of virt pollution, posting flurries of freespeech stickies across the building… even as cleaner programs swept them away. On one vir-level, janitor avatars wearing a Darktide Services logo pushed cartoon brooms to clear the protest-its.
Tor glanced at one synthetic leaflet. It responded to her attention by ballooning outward:
The Autistic Do Not Need a “Cure”!
Another blared and rippled.
One God Is Enough!
More of the animated slogans clustered, trying to crowd into Tor’s point of view. Regretting curiosity, Tor clamped on her CANCEL tooth, escaping the e-flet swarm, but not before a final dissent banner fluttered like some beseeching butterfly.
Leave Human Nature Alone!
As her spec overlay washed clean of vraiffiti, she pondered, Right. That’s sure going to happen.
Approaching the front steps of the Atkins Center, Tor sensed the real-life protestors rouse to regard her through thick, colored lenses. In seconds, whatever group they represented would have her ident, beckoning co-believers to join from far locales, combining in an ad hoc smart-mob, bent on figuring out what she was doing here.
Hey, the more viewers the better, she thought, mounting the stairs. Naturally, those inside knew all about her and the door opened before she arrived.