He finds himself pondering whether he could grab him and tip him over the balcony, send his Armani-wrapped body tumbling down into the steel-and-concrete canyon below. But the railing looks too high, Brad too heavy. He looks like he works out, when he’s not watching his money or scratching his balls.
Instead Rush returns to gazing out over the city, down onto the usually hidden rooftop infrastructure, countless uplink dishes and microwave relays, birds circling the thermals from air-conditioner outlets the size of tennis courts. Somewhere uptown two NYPD helicopters hover just above rooftop level, and as he squints in the dying light he can see a swarm—maybe a dozen strong—of small quadcopter drones descend from them, splitting up and peeling off as they drop into the streets.
“Looks like something’s going down,” says Brad.
“It’ll be the protest.”
“What protest?”
Rush turns to look at him, slightly incredulous. “You’ve not heard? It’s all over the timelines.”
“Ah, I never check them.” He smiles. “Got my algos to do that.”
Rush shakes his head, lets out a reluctant chuckle, then instantly feels guilty. “It’s a Black Lives Matter march. They’re protesting the shooting of a seventy-eight-year-old woman in Queens.”
“Jesus. What’d she do?”
“Nothing.” Rush grits his teeth. “That’s the whole fucking point. She didn’t do anything. Cops got a tip-off from their predictive software that there was a mugging in one of the housing projects in Flushing. Cops turned up and fired into a dark stairwell. Killed this poor old lady that was just minding her business. Going to the bodega to get some milk, apparently.”
“Shit. When did that happen?”
“This morning.”
“And it was the predictive software’s fault?”
“Well, it was the fucking cops’ fault for firing into a stairwell before asking any questions. But yeah, the software fucked up. It’s been doing that a lot lately. Another one of your algorithms that nobody really understands how they work. Meant to predict where crimes take place based on all sorts of data: embedded sensors, social media, cameras, residents’ profiles…”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Yeah, same shit but this time instead of you losing some cash someone gets killed. Since the NYPD started using it in the spring there’s been this huge increase in wrongful arrests. And at least four deaths that we know of. All African Americans. You know what they say about algos, they’re only as good as—”
“—the data you put in ’em. Yeah. Hear that a lot.”
“Right. Well, it turns out the data the cops have been putting into them is racist as fuck.”
“So who are they protesting? The cops or the algo?”
“Both, I think. The cops mainly, for using it. But also I think the protest is going to swing past the offices of the company that makes the software. They’re actually up near Times Square.”
“Who’s the company?” Brad asks him.
“Prescience. Start-up out of MIT originally.” He can see Brad’s eyes flicking and blinking behind his spex’s lenses, googling as he speaks. “Big guns in the data-analysis biz. They started doing full, real-time analysis of Facebook and Twitter demographics. Helped your president win his last two elections, helped get those fascists in France back in power. Then they moved into predictive policing, but it’s not been working out so well for them. Obviously.”
Brad sucks his teeth. “That’s terrible. Just awful. I mean, the cops have a tough enough job as it is.”
Rush sighs, bites his tongue, fights back rage again. “Sure. Anyway, I think I might go down and check it out. Wanna come along? Show your support?”
“Ah.” Brad smiles, nervously. “I’d love to, but I don’t do well in crowds, y’know?”
“Sure.”
“Is that… is that real?”
“Yeah. Think so.”
There is an original Keith Haring here. In the fucking bathroom.
Scott wraps his legs around the back of Rush’s thighs, pulling him against him, their mouths and crotches meeting, the taste of vodka and salt, the sensation of hardness behind denim.
As they stop kissing Rush pulls away slightly, takes in the bathroom again. It’s attached to the master bedroom and is about half the size of Scott’s whole apartment. Scott is sitting on a marble countertop, between two sinks. Matching gilded faucets. Behind Rush there are two showers.
“I can’t believe you’re leaving so soon,” Scott says.
It’s true. He’s only got a couple of days left before he heads back to the U.K. The last week had flown by, far too quickly.
“I know. But I’ve gotta. I’ve got to give that talk on Monday.”
“The talk on the boat?”
Rush smiles at him, shakes his head. “The Dymaxion isn’t a boat. It’s a ship. A container ship.”
“The Dymaxion, it’s a container ship.” Scott mimics his serious tone back at him. “Oh my god, who are you? Where the hell did I find you?”
They both start laughing.
“Just cancel it,” says Scott. “Stay here with me.”
“I can’t. I mean, I’d love to, but I can’t. I promised. And Simon is a good friend.”
“Your friends are weird. You’ve got weird fucking friends.”
“That… that’s true.”
Fittingly, he’d first met Simon Strickland on the Dymaxion about five years ago, not long after Simon had bought her, saving her from being cut up for parts by Maersk in some Gujarat ship-breaking yard. He’d got her fixed up and she limped back to the U.K., where she’d floated off the coast of Dover for a few months while Simon had run his speculative-design summer school on board. He’d invited Rush along to teach classes on digital protest and activism. The ship was buzzing then, full of young design students and excited academics on the upper decks, workmen and maintenance crews on the lower ones. By the end of August she was ready to sail, and Simon had set off on his first supply-chain expedition, taking more students, artists, and paying customers back to the source of it all, the Dymaxion transformed into what he called “a floating Temporary Autonomous Zone meets nomadic design studio,” the hundreds of containers stacked in its hold turned into dorms, art installations, and “experimental spaces.” It was halfway between a floating conference center and one of those reconstructed tall ships they take kids out on for months to learn trade history. Rush imagines it was every bit as pretentious and annoying as it sounds.
“You having fun?” Scott asks him.
“Always.” They kiss again.
“No, silly. I mean here. The party?”
“Ah.” Rush looks past him, into his own eyes in the mirror behind him. He looks tired, he thinks. “Sure. It’s okay. I was hoping we could get out of here, though.”
“Oh, really?” Scott pulls him against him again. Vodka, salt, hardness.
“I was… hoping we could go check out the protest.”
Scott’s shoulders fall, defeated. He smiles. “God, you’re so predictable. I thought you were being romantic, wanting to get me on my own.”
“I am, I mean I do want to. Later. Sorry I—”
“Shhh. It’s okay. I’m just teasing.” Scott brings up a hand to brush the stubble on his face. Rush finds himself leaning into Scott’s palm, like a cat trying to get you to stroke its face. “I think it’s cute how involved you get in these things. How much you care.”