“Looks to me like that’s exactly what happened.”
A gunshot sounded and she ducked involuntarily, drawing her weapon and listening to the clang of a round hitting metal.
“Shit!” Deuce said. “It’s coming from the south wall of the canyon. They’re going for the helicopter!”
Randi slid her back against the sooty building as more shots rang out. The wind was picking up and the sniper could only manage a hit every two or three times but the chopper was pretty much devoid of armor. One lucky hit and they’d have to decide between the humiliation of calling in a rescue and a long, dangerous walk home.
She came to the edge of her cover and strolled across a dirt track to a wall on the other side. The deliberately slow pace had its intended effect and she saw a round kick up dust a meter or so to her right. Hopefully, the sniper would forget about the chopper now that he knew flesh-and-blood targets were on the menu.
“I’m guessing that guy has friends,” Deuce shouted. He fired off a volley in the general direction of their attacker, but his weapon wasn’t designed for that kind of range. “Word’s gonna get out about our visit pretty quick.”
Randi pointed at a headless body about halfway between them and the helicopter. “We’ll go on my mark. But on the way, we’re picking up that body. I want an autopsy.”
“An autopsy?” Deuce said incredulously. “I mean, I don’t have a medical degree or anything, but I’m pretty sure the cause of death was the bullet in his chest or the fact that his freakin’ head is gone!”
“I didn’t come all this way to leave empty-handed.”
He fired a few additional rounds, more out of frustration than from any hope they would dissuade the sniper trying to zero in on them. “I swear, Randi. Someday, when no one is looking, I’m gonna kill you myself.”
4
True to her word, Janine had gotten them seats four rows from the front. She had a natural pushiness that, combined with her youth and beauty, tended to part a crowd pretty well.
“I wonder if he finally got new glasses,” Janine said, putting her hand on Smith’s forearm. “We have a pool at the office and it’s up to more than five hundred bucks.”
Her question was answered a moment later when Christian Dresner strode onto stage and stalked toward the lone lectern at its center. The Coke-bottle glasses he’d been wearing since the eighties were still there, as were the suit and tie that he seemed to have bought around the same time.
The truth was that Dresner looked as out of place as Smith did in this crowd. Not only the clothes, but the graying blond hair worn in such a shaggy, haphazard style that many people believed he cut it himself. In Smith’s mind, though, everything seemed carefully calculated to diminish the almost cartoonishly square jaw, the heavy shoulders, and the still-narrow waist. With contacts, a decent tailor, and a coupon to Supercuts he would look like a spectacularly successful Nazi eugenics project.
A light applause erupted and Dresner seemed a little uncomfortable, losing himself for a moment in securing a Bluetooth headset to his ear. In fact, this was only the fourth public appearance in the notoriously shy genius’s career.
While comparisons to Steve Jobs had been obvious, Smith had always thought Willy Wonka was a more apt analogy: an odd recluse who suddenly burst on the scene with something incredible and then retreated to the safety of the factory.
“I want to thank you for coming,” he said in the slight German accent that he’d never shaken off. “I hope you’ll be as excited about my new project as I am.”
The screen behind him came to life with an image of a hand holding a device that looked a little like a gray iPhone with no screen.
“Electric cigarette case?” Janine said, nudging Smith in the ribs as a confused murmur rose up around them.
He honestly didn’t know. A tiny switch and a blue indicator light were visible on the right side, but other than that it was just a graceful piece of plastic.
Dresner pulled his jacket back and showed an example of the real thing hung on his belt. “I’d like to introduce you to Merge. The next — and maybe final — generation of personal computing devices.”
“Oh, God,” Janine groaned, actually slapping her forehead. “He’s invented the cell phone. And he’s carrying it in a holster.”
“How many of you out there use augmented reality systems?” Dresner continued, blissfully unaware of Janine’s sarcasm. “You know — astronomy apps, something that tells you how good the restaurant you’re standing in front of is…anything.”
More than half the audience raised their hands and Smith joined them. Janine just folded her arms across her chest and scowled.
“And how many of you really find them practical?”
His hand dropped along with everyone else’s. As much as he loved his $2.99 constellation finder, holding a phone at arm’s length and looking past it at the sky wasn’t exactly a seamless experience.
“GPS has definitely moved that technology forward, but we’re still stuck with an interface that isn’t all that much different from the one we had when the first personal computers came out more than thirty years ago. It’s that, and not the software, holding the technology back. It’s not particularly hard to imagine augmented reality’s potential, but almost no one is pursuing it because of the lack of a workable hardware platform. I’m hoping to change that.”
He walked back to the lectern. “Let me switch you over to what I see.”
The screen behind him faded into a video of the crowd as he scanned across it. Along the left side was a series of semitransparent icons glowing various shades of red and green. Across the top was some general data — that he was connected to the Las Vegas Convention Center wireless network, the temperature inside and outside, as well as a number of abbreviations and numbers that Smith couldn’t decipher.
Janine leaned into him again. “That actually looks pretty good. I tried the Google Glasses prototype and they just have a cheesy head-up display at the top of one of the lenses.”
Smith nodded. “I tested a prototype from a British company that projects onto your retina, so it can work with your entire field of vision and create that transparent effect. Great idea but the images were blurry and every time the glasses moved on your face, the image would break up. Maybe Dresner’s nailed it.”
“I’ll admit it’s a little cool,” she said with a shrug. “But hell if I’m spending the rest of my life walking around in glasses that make me look like I’m using a chain saw.”
Dresner looked down from the stage and focused on a man in the second row, his surprised face suddenly filling the screen. “Let’s make a phone call. Bob, why don’t you stand up?”
He did, looking self-consciously at the crowd behind him. Either he was a damn fine actor, or this wasn’t a setup.
“Now, I know that Bob is a good citizen and turned his cell off before he came in. But could I bother you to turn it back on?”
Dresner looked out over his audience again. The phone icon at the edge of the screen expanded and the address book went immediately from names starting with “A” to names starting with “S,” finally scrolling to “Stamen, Bob.” A moment later, the tinny sound of Blondie’s “Call Me” filled the room.
The increasingly nervous-looking man answered and his voice was transmitted through the PA system by Dresner’s Merge. “Hello?”