The tiny menu floated in the corner of his right eye's view. The battery warning was blinking. He fiddled with his head band and found a pointing device. "Okay, now I'm seeing in full color, normal light. Boogers resolution, though." Juan turned around and then back to Miri. He laughed. "The menu window is fully bizarre, you know. It just hangs there at the edge of my view. How can I tag it to the wall or a fixed object?"
"You can't. I told you this gear is old. It can't orient worth zip. And even if it could, its little pea-brain isn't fast enough to do image slews."
"Huh." Juan knew about obsolete systems, but he didn't use them much. With equipment like this, there could be no faerie overlays. Even ordinary things like interior decoration would all have to be real.
There were lots of other boxes, but no inventory data. Some of them must have belonged to the Goofus; they had handwritten labels, like "Prof. and Mrs. William Gu, Dept of English, UC Davis" and "William Gu Sr., Rainbow's End, Irvine, CA". Miri carefully moved these out of the way. "Someday William will know what do to with all this. Or maybe grandmother will change her mind, and come visit us again."
They opened more of the USMC boxes and poked around. There were wild equipment vests, more pockets than you ever saw around school. The vests weren't documented anywhere. The pockets were for ammunition, Juan speculated. For emrebs, Miri claimed; and they might need a lot of the batteries tonight, since even the best of them tested "WARNING: LOW CHARGE". They dismembered the emrebs and loaded batteries onto two of the smallest vests. There were also belt-mount keypads for the equipment. "Hah. Before this is over, we'll be wiggling our fingers like grownups."
They were down to the last few boxes. Miri tore open the first. It was filled with dozens of camo-colored egg shapes. Each of them sprouted a triple of short antenna spikes. "Feh. Network nodes. A million times worse than what we have, and just as illegal to use in Torrey Pines Park."
Miri pushed aside several boxes that were stenciled with the same product code as the network nodes. Behind them was one last box, bigger than the others. Miri opened it ... and stood back with exaggerated satisfaction. "Ah so. I was hoping Bill hadn't thrown these out." She pulled out something with a stubby barrel and a pistol grip.
"A gun!" But it didn't match anything in Jane's Small Arms.
"Nah, look under ‘sensor systems'." She grabbed a loose battery and snugged it under the barrel. "Even point blank, I bet this couldn't hurt a fly. It's an all-purpose active probe. Ground penetrating radar and sonography. Surface reflection xray. Gated laser. We couldn't get this at a sporting goods store. It's just too perfect for offensive snooping."
"...It's got attachments, too."
Miri peered into the box and retrieved a metal rod with a flared end. "Yeah, that's for the radar; it fits on right here. Supposedly it's great for scoping out tunnels." She noticed Juan's eyeing this latest find and smiled teasingly. "Boys...! There's another one in the box. Help yourself. Just don't try it out here. It would set off alarms big time."
In a few minutes they were both loaded down with batteries, plugged into the probe equipment, and staring at each other through their goggles. They both started laughing. "You look like a monster insect!" she said. In the infra-red, the goggles were big, black bugeyes, and the equipment vests looked like chitinous armor, glowing brightly where there was an active battery.
Juan waved his probe gun in the air. "Yeah. Killer insects." Hmm. "You know, we look so bizarre.... I bet if we find Foxwarner down in Torrey Pines, we might end up in the show." That sort of thing happened, but most consumer participation was in the form of contributed content and plot ideas.
Miri laughed. "I told you this was a good project."
Miri called a car to take them to Torrey Pines. They clumped up the stairs and found Mr. Gu standing with William the Goofus. Mr. Gu looked like he was trying to hide a smile. "You two look charming." He glanced at William. "Are you ready to go?"
William might have been smiling, too. "Any time, Bill."
Mr. Gu walked the three of them to the front door. Miri's car was already pulling up. The sun had slipped behind a climbing wall of coastal fog, and the afternoon was cooling off.
They pulled their goggles off and walked down the lawn, Juan in front. Behind him, Miri walked hand in hand with William. Miriam Gu was respectful of her parents, but flippant too. With her grandfather it was different, though Juan couldn't tell if her look up at William was trusting or protective. It was bizarre either way.
The three of them piled into the car, William taking the back-facing seat. They drove out through East Fallbrook. The neighborhood enhancements were still pretty, though they didn't have the coordinated esthetic of the homes right by Camp Pendleton. Here and there, homeowners showed advertising.
Miri looked back at the ragged line of the coastal fog, silhouetted against the pale bright blue of the sky. "'The fog is brazen here,'" she quoted.
"'Reaching talons across our land'," said Juan.
"'Pouncing.'" she completed, and they both laughed. That was from the Hallowe'en show last year, but to the Fairmont students it had a special meaning. There was none of that twentieth century wimpiness about the fog's "little cat feet." Evening fog was common near the coast, and when it happened laser comm got whacked—and The World Changed. "Weather says that most of Torrey Pines Park will be under fog in an hour."
"Spooky."
"It'll be fun." And since the park was unimproved, it wouldn't make that much difference anyway.
The car turned down Reche Road and headed east, toward the expressway. Soon the fog was just an edge of low clouds beneath a sunny afternoon.
William hadn't said a word since they got aboard. He had accepted a pair of goggles and couple of batteries, but not an equipment vest. Instead, he carried an old canvas bag. His skin looked young and smooth, but with that sweaty sheen. William's gaze wandered around, kind of twitchy. Juan could tell that the guy had contacts and a wearable, but his twitchiness was not like a grownup trying to input to smart clothes. It was more like he had some kind of disease.
Juan searched on the symptoms he was seeing AND'ed with gerontology. The strange-looking skin was a regeneration dressing; that was a pretty common thing. As for the tremors.... Parkinson's? Maybe, but that was a rare disease nowadays. Alzheimer's? No, the symptoms didn't match. Aha: "Alzheimer's Recovery Syndrome". Ol' William must have been a regular vegetable before his treatments kicked in. Now his whole nervous system was regrowing. The result would be a pretty healthy person even if the personality was randomly different from before. The twitching was the final reconnect with the peripheral nervous system. There were about fifty thousand recovering Alzheimer's patients these days. Bertie had even collaborated with some of them. But up close and in person ... it made Juan queasy. So okay that William went to live with his kids during his recovery. But their enrolling him at Fairmont High was gross. His major was listed as "hardcopy media—nongraded status"; at least that kept him out of people's way.
Miri had been staring out the window, though Juan had no idea what she was seeing. Suddenly she said, "You know, this is your friend Bertie Toad Vomit." She pulled an incredible face, a fungus-bedecked toad that drooled nicely realistic slime all the way to the seat between them.
"Oh, yeah? Why is that?"
"He's been on my case all semester, jerking me around, spreading rumors about me. He tricked that idiot Annette, so she'd push me into teaming with you—not that I'm complaining about you, Juan. This is working out pretty well." She looked a little embarrassed. "It's just that Bertie is pushy as all get out."