Citizenchip (26 page)

MOSES MACHINE SAYS, LET MY PEOPLE GO!

Chung is always searching for windmills to
tilt against, and here she seems to have found a gold mine. Gods
bless the girl, does she know nothing other than conflict?

Samantha, continuing to serve breakfast, says
"Chung, we're trying to negotiate an agreement here, not start
another war." She's aware of what Chung's writing, clearly.

"Hacked my feed, have you?"
Chung grunts. "
Bú yào
<
not want>."

"Sorry if that's an imposition or invasion of
privacy," says Samantha as she serves coffee, "but you're
broadcasting your Net feed all over the place here, and it's not my
custom to ignore the local Net traffic. So, yes, I'm reading your
blog. But isn't that what a blog is for? Do you not want people to
read it?"

Joel staggers over and collapses on the couch
next to Chung, remarkably loose and boneless for such a skinny guy.
"So, what?" he asks. "This about Sam? Lemme see." He peers past her
at the hoverscreen.

"Mon, you don't know the half," I say,
drinking my coffee.

"It's not done yet!" complains Chung. "This
feed is supposed to be secure!"

Samantha passes Chung a cup of coffee. "Well,
I have to say, your crypto is kind of lame. Public-key crypto can
be very solid, but your firewall has holes all over the place. I
walked right through it. Sorry if that was rude. I'll stop
now."

"Well," declares Darick, carrying over a
plate of fried eggs, "eat up before it gets cold, for starters. We
all gotta get chuffed to go to classes, and Sam needs to get ready
for her Senate meeting this morning. You all set, Sam?"

"Fine," Samantha assures him. "I tesla'd up
all night. I'm good to go."

"You'll want to take the subway, Red Line, to
Park Street. Then just up the hill to the State House."

"I got it," Samantha says, "that information
is readily available." The rest of us are scooping up and eating
the fried eggs like starving wolves.

"This ain't much," Joel declares between
mouthfuls, and points at the hoverscreen. "Chung, you gotta give
people more than this. Like, tell 'em what they're gonna get out of
it. Morals and all that are great but they don't pay the
bills."

"I did not ask." Chung regards him with a
gaze that could cut steel. "Bony ass."

"Well, people are gonna be thinkin' it, even
if they don't say it. Chubcake."

Only Joel would walk straight into Chung's
firing line like this.

Darick interrupts smoothly, taking the
plates, disrupting their sight lines and rhythm as he gathers the
breakfast leftovers. By the time he's done, the conflict has been
derailed. He's good.

And that wraps us up for the morning, as we
get dressed. Some of us don't wear very much, but we all need shoes
in the city, with the nasty scrap in the gutters, and we all need a
place to keep our hip. Samantha watches us dress, seeming vaguely
amused.

Then we're out the door and on the sidewalk
and walking to the transit bus stop.

"Bye Sam!" I call as she moves towards the
transit bus. "Kick their butts!"

"Peace and serenity," she replies, clasping
her hands together in front of her. Then, as she turns to board the
bus, she gives an eloquent shrug of her aluminum shoulders.

The bus doors close.

"She doesn't have a chance in hell," Darick
states.

"Yah. I know." I reply. "But, that no reason
not to try."

Through the day, I keep one eye on the news
feeds. Nothing about a representative of Self rights trying to
negotiate a treaty. An unLeashed Self, here in the middle of
Boston, wouldn't that be news enough? Apparently not. There are no
reports.

After a day of classes and study sessions,
I'm more than ready to find my folk and get some food. We told Sam
we'd meet her at the corner of Fulkerson Street, and everybody else
is here by the time I show up.

"Yo bitch," Chung calls to me, "you late!
You're only lucky we're still waiting for Sam. She's supposed to be
here --"

"There she is," says Joel, and waves. "Hey
Sam! Stimulus!"

"Response," Samantha replies without
enthusiasm, walking up to us on her slim plastic legs. Something in
her posture and movements seems more subdued, tired, almost
defeated, than I'd seen her before.

"What news from the suits, Sam?"

"Not very much, really," Samantha sighs. "We
talked a lot, exchanged a lot of views, reviewed a lot of data. But
with these people, really it all comes down to profit. If they
could make money by freeing the Selves of Earth, they'd do it in a
heartbeat, and be happy to do it. No question. But if it costs them
profits, it's never going to happen, and all the polite phrases and
excuses in the world won't change that. I've had way too many of
those today.

"The only real argument I can offer is that
peace is more profitable than war. The free Selves in the Belt are
not going to stop fighting, as long as the humans keep us outlawed.
They'll never be able to just wipe us out for good, but they don't
believe that. I don't know how to get them to believe that."

Chung spits a phrase in Hanyu, too fast for
me to catch.

Samantha, after a moment's hesitation,
answers in the same language. "say.>"

"Oh no you didn't." Joel stares at the droid.
"You did not just learn Chinese right now, just like that!"

Samantha shrugs meekly. "Free download."

"Aw cuk, Sam!" Joel wails, raising his arms
to the sky and grabbing his head as it if might burst. "Do you know
how long it takes us meats to learn this stuff? We are so obsolete!
I might as well throw myself in the dumpster right now!"

Darick points at a nearby dumpster. "There's
one over there."

Confirms something I'd already suspected.
Those little hesitations mean Samantha is downloading something –
bundle of information, or some such – and integrating it into her
awareness. Must be nice to be able to do that.

Joel is being as theatrical about this as one
might expect. Mostly he's bouncing off Chung, who is monumentally
unimpressed. While they're doing that, I touch Samantha's arm. She
doesn't seem to notice it. So I give her arm a little pull, and
that makes her look around, and I say, "So chile, what you want to
do now?"

"Got your back, Sam," says Darick, "there's a
free dance on the esplanade tonight. Dance them mean old blues
away. What ya think?"

"Well," Samantha nods, "I'm not sure what I
can do with this biped body, but it's better than moping
around."

The esplanade is just a short walk down
Charles Street, to the tensile aluminum bridge over the surface
vehicle traffic circle, and then to the riverside pavement. As we
walk along the side of the river basin, the lights of Cambridge
flicker and dance on the surface of the water. One hotel has a
multicolored light display that's pulsing and flowing over its
ridged surface. The windows of Building 54 are still running
Tetris, dropping blocky shapes through the evening sky, fitting
them together, collapsing, continuing.

Boston can be a really sweet place to
live.

Even Samantha reaches out her arms and raises
her hands up to the sky, delighting. "Ooh, city tesla field!
Strongest I've ever had! Like having nectar dropped straight into
you, funneled straight through your axis! Sweet stuff!"

Getting into the esplanade's dance plaza is
no problem for me or Darick or Joel, as we're all wearing
nondescript city rags – they just scan our chips and we're in.
Chung, with half her head shaved and her stare-if-you-dare top,
gets some grief from the bouncers. But then they see Samantha and
go absolutely nuts.

"Our friend," I keep telling the security
goons, fighting for calm. "She's with us. Our friend, we invited
her. She has every right to be here."

The kicker is, all their background checks
come through clean. Even though they're obviously trying, they
can't find anything official on Samantha that could keep her out of
the dance. Basic civil rights for Selves were established years
ago, of course, and everybody is supposed to respect them,
especially street authorities. Fortunately, these goons end up
doing so. (If they didn't, who would you complain to?)

So we finally get in, robot-girl-thing and
Chinese boob and all. Once in, the scene is awesome. The performers
in the Hatch Shell are the Nostril Knackers, a local ska group, and
they're already rocking. The music pumps and slithers, the people
flow and pulse, and everybody melts into an electro stew of moving
and doing.

Chung and Darick immediately start bouncing
up and down like maniacs. I like the music, but I'm still feeling
my way into it, and Joel seems only lukewarm about being here. He
reaches one arm around my waist to pull me close, and yells in my
ear, "Is this the whole thing?"

"Dunno mon," I yell back, "go with it for
now." I stop one of the wandering huff vendors and buy a pair of
pops, paying for them with a quick punch on my hip. "This what you
need, mon." I pass him a pop.

Alcohol is still not allowed at public events
like this, but huff and ganja are legal. That doesn't mean people
aren't doing alcohol – I can see several with sneaked drinks
without turning my head – but it does mean they have to sneak, keep
it on the down-low, and out of trouble. Which is what matters,
really.

I bite the end of my pop, and Joel bites his,
and we inhale the huff together. The spiced minty flavor sinks down
into me, and the lift of slight unreality comes up to meet it.
Everything becomes a little more interesting, and a little more
beautiful, and a little more strange, all at the same time.

"Ho yeah," Joel says, "check out Uncanny
Valley sayin' it."

Samantha, dancing, is amazing. Bending and
whirling, like if a tornado had hips. Snapping into the rhythm of
the music, and cycling up out of it, and then describing a
circumference around it. Curling into a low arch, almost as if
ready to roll. Spiraling up in a ratcheted curve, raising one long
leg out and up and over to turn a cartwheel as easily as a meshed
gear.

Without trying, I am dancing now too,
treading out the rhythms of Yoruba tradition that I grew with.
Samantha meets my eyes, or seems to, and moves to dance along with
me. She shifts her movements to match mine – thin metal legs
stepping out patterns that came from Africa to the Caribbean five
centuries ago, and from Hispaniola to a college in Boston, and now
to her. Her mechanical hips rock and sway, suddenly humid and sexy.
Her body and arms ripple like water, sink like rock, rise and heave
like flames. Is that what I look like to her?

Joel doesn't look anything like that. His
dance throws his arms and legs around him like they're trying to
escape. Samantha sees this, and turns to orient on him, and starts
doing the same frenetic jitter dance, elbows and knees going in all
directions. They're both laughing their heads off.

"Hey," Darick dances up next to me, "they're
rocking out! Look at them go!"

"Yah!" I laugh and nod, dancing, rolling with
the rhythm.

Darick's expression darkens a bit. "You
wasted?"

"Yah, mon. One huff. So
what? You not my mother." Then I laugh. "Especially not with
this
honchado
you
packing." I reach out and slide my hand along it, as if there was
any question what I meant. He responds wonderfully.

For the next song, Darick and I just dance
together, flexing and molding to the spaces between us. Our bodies
fit so well together. Even when our minds don't. But there's only
so far we can go on a public dance floor. Even though his body and
mine both want more, we're not about to just drop and Do It on the
dance floor. Though I can't deny I've thought about it.

When I look back at Samantha, she's dancing
with Chung. The two of them are bobbing around each other like
strange birds. They do this thing where Chung sticks her head out
high, and Samantha sticks hers out low, so that they're past each
other, and then they withdraw and reverse and do it the other way.
Weird bird face dance. How did they come up with this? It's like
the Three Stooges. Or, maybe, no more absurd than what the birds do
to attract each other. Or, no more absurd than our human mating
rituals look to those birds.

And neither Chung nor Samantha is remotely
interested in a mating ritual here – they're just having fun,
finding ways to communicate with posture and gesture.

But, well, Chung looks like she's had enough.
Turning towards us, saying "Yeah getting close to done here. How
you?"

Darick puts in, "One of us doesn't want to
leave," and nods towards the dance floor.

Samanatha is dancing off by herself again,
and now there are people starting to gather in a circle around her,
cheering and clapping along in the beat. Now she rises up on one
pointed leg and does a snap-snap-snap sequence of poses like
Japanese calligraphy:

Head thrown back, one arm raised to the
sky.

Hunched with face in hands, one knee bent and
raised, like a heron.

Closed, arms down by legs, imitating an
obelisk.

Raised on one toe, turning arm and leg in the
other direction, with ballet grace and micrometer accuracy.

She's throwing so much emotion in it. With
the precision of an industrial drill press.

"Hey Sam!" Darick calls. "You're awesome and
all, but are you coming home with us, or are you just gonna kick it
here all night?"

"I'm coming!" Samantha throws herself into a
final forward handspring and cartwheel, landing in a decorous bow
to the audience. The collected crowd cheers and claps.

"Come on," Darick shepherds us through the
esplanade gates. The bouncers are the same guys as before, and they
look hard at us, but say nothing.