Citizenchip (27 page)

Samantha walks out with the easy confidence
of a bullfighter, or a martial arts monk. She's come a long way
from that first awkward handshake, just yesterday. "That was great!
Thank you, guys, for taking me out. Turns out that was just what I
needed."

Darick sighs. "Sam, that's great and all, but
do you think it's smart to be attracting so much attention? If
there's any scumbags out there want to mess with you, and they
didn't know where to find you, well, they sure do now!"

"Oh bring 'em!" Chung growls.

"Seriously," Darick says in his Authority
Voice. I've heard it before. He doesn't use it lightly. "The head
that sticks up gets cut off."

Samantha says meekly, "Sorry. It just felt so
good to get out there and move, you know? I installed a subroutine
to imitate the effects of endorphins in humans, so that I could
feel what you feel like when you do sustained activity and get an
endorphin increase. While also exploring modes of personal self
expression through physical posture and movement. Turns out it's
pretty awesome."

"We all like to dance, Sam," I assure
her.

Joel adds, "Just maybe turn the knob down to
seven or eight."

"Well, yes," Samantha says. "Ordinarily, that
would be very good advice. But I believe there are times when we
need to turn the knob up all the way." She's staring down the
street.

We're on Mugar Way, an extended bridge from
the riverside park to Charles Street. Convenient, but this section
has very poor police coverage. Suddenly I'm afraid.

If there's any scumbags out there want to
mess with you ...

The thing that has stepped out of the shadows
onto the sidewalk to block our way is not human. In fact, it looks
very much like Samantha. Except this android is all painted in
police blue.

"Samantha, your data ports are closed," it
says. "Open your data ports, please."

"Why?" Samantha asks guardedly. "Do you have
data you wish to send?"

"Open your data ports, please."

"You are not broadcasting ident codes,"
Samantha says. "Who are you? I am Sol-Marsa NmL7a8uf9QvW Samantha
dam Tharsis. What authority do you have here?"

"Alert, sirs," it calls, and two keystones
emerge from the darkened alley. In combat uniforms, both with Long
Arms strapped to their forearms. These are graviton collimators,
illegal (and too expensive) for civilians to own, and the
keystones' favorite bully toy. Right now they're both in Broad
mode, about the size and shape of a tall beer can. In this mode the
beam has about the same effect as a really hard punch with a fist.
Which is bad enough, but they can shift modes quickly, and then
we'll be in real trouble.

As one, Darick and Samantha slide their rear
feet back, spreading out their arms, straightening their backs,
lowering their center of gravity. I've seen it before. It looks
almost like dance, but no. It is combat posture.

This time, Samantha didn't hesitate in the
slightest. She didn't need to download anything, to be ready for
this. She had already downloaded everything she needed. She's been
expecting this. Ready for a fight.

"You guys cops?" Darick challenges. "Where
you badges, man?"

"You all just gonna step off now," says the
Sergeant. Why call him that? He's not wearing any insignia. He just
has the attitude. The one next to him is clearly the Private, with
his pale-faced resolution to do the job. "We just wanna talk to the
chip for a minute."

The cybocop takes a step forward. "Samantha,
open your data ports, please."

Darick tenses. "You got no badges, you ain't
no cops, man." Years of ROTC combat training are straining in his
muscles, screaming to be let go.

Samantha stands low and level, in general
self-defense posture.

"Assholes!" Chung screams at them. She
strides forward to place herself front and center, pushing her face
at the keystones. They are moving their Long Arms closer to aiming
at us. Fingering the controls.

Chung is jabbing a finger at them and yelling
in Hanyu. Of course, none of them know Hanyu, so they don't
understand that the words that's she's screaming have little or
nothing to do with the emotion that she's expressing.

"" she
spits at them as if it were a vile insult. "danger, machine-friend! Flee! Move fast! Flee now!>"

Samantha drops and swivels and springs for
the street. But the police droid is just as fast as she is, and
springs to block her way.

The keystones turn to point their weapons
towards the droids. Darick drops into a squat on one leg, flicking
the other leg out and using his foot to hook and pull the
Sergeant's ankle. The Sergeant tips and falls into the Private, and
the two of them fall against the wall and each other, cursing.

Samantha and the cybocop fighting look like a
speeded-up kungfu movie: a blur of chops and blocks and kicks and
spins. The law doesn't allow droids to be armed with weapons of any
sort. But it looks like they don't really need to be. The cybocop
keeps advancing, and Samantha keeps retreating. It's trying to grab
her. Hold her for the armies of goons that are surely about to
descend on us.

The Sergeant is quick to recover, and fires
his Long Arm right into Darick's stomach. Darick yells and drops to
the pavement, curled around himself, gasping.

Chung shrieks a curse at them, and the
Private fires his Long Arm into her gut too. It drops her just like
it did Darick.

Both Joel and I have our hips out and
broadcasting, sending live video out to feedsites and Net servers.
This is what we can do – we're not fighters. The Sergeant meets our
eyes and glares, but he doesn't turn his Long Arm towards us. He
knows that as long as there's a video feed to the Net, it would
cost him his job. (If there isn't, then apparently all bets are off
– I keep hearing that this is how keystones get their jollies off
duty.)

Instead, the Sergeant operates the controls
of his Long Arm, twisting it out and down into Narrow mode, as long
and thin as a rifle barrel. With pretty much the same effect.

The cybocop has grabbed Samantha's wrists,
both of their servomotors whining in protest as they struggle,
moving like a slow motion dance. "Here, sirs!" it calls.

The Private has also changed his Long Arm to
Narrow mode, and the two of them take aim. The first shot blows off
Samantha's left shoulder and arm.

"Noo!" I wail, while desperately trying to
keep the camera pointed.

The second shot hits Samantha's head
squarely, in a spatter of silicon and aluminum shrapnel. The third
shot blows Samantha's chest all over the street, with chunks more
substantial than silicon chips or plastic scraps – power supply,
maybe. There are more shots, but I can't count them. With tears
running down my cheeks, I can only keep my camera on the slaughter,
and keep it feeding to the Net sites.

Joel has moved to help Darick, who is picking
himself up off the ground, coughing and waving off offers of help.
Chung is still curled, gasping and struggling like a beached fish.
Helpless. She must hate that.

The Private, twisting his Long Arm back down
into Broad mode, is turning towards me, because I'm still holding
out my hip, recording video.

"Yah," I say at him, sobbing, "go ahead and
hit me, mon. The whole world is watching you do it." I turn to
point the camera directly at his face. He glares, stymied.

"Beat it," grunts the Sergeant, climbing back
onto his feet. "All of y'all, get moving. Don't want any more
trouble, now do we?"

I feel a buzz on my hip, and ignore it.

Joel, having helped Darick up despite his
protests, is singing through his teeth as he attends Chung, who is
still struggling to breathe.

Tin soldiers and Nixon
coming
We're
finally on our own
This summer I hear the
drumming
Four dead in Ohio

"Who, me?" Joel smiles broadly at the
Sergeant. "Just singin' a little song here. There a law against
that?"

The Sergeant glowers at him, and turns
away.

The cybocop is dutifully cleaning up the
mess. That mess used to be Samantha. Her heart, her guts, her
brain, splashed all over the street, and needing to be scooped up
like industrial waste. I would almost want to claim the body,
except there's not much body left. And it never was Samantha's
actual body, was it? She was a Self. They're not attached to bodies
like we humans are.

I feel another buzz on my hip. Someone wants
to talk with me.

"Can we get outta here?" I ask. Chung is on
her feet, with Joel helping her, and Darick looks like he's
ambulatory.

"Move it!" barks the Sergeant. "About
time!"

The four of us pull together and move off,
down off the Mugar bridge, into the Boston streets, crusty with
history. And with a lotta other stuff I don't want to think
about.

"You guys okay?" Darick rasps. He's recovered
from that graviton gut punch pretty well.

"Not dead yet," Chung groans.

I feel another buzz on my hip. I pull out my
hip and it activates its hoverscreen display without me telling it
to. For a moment I don't understand what I'm seeing. The display is
not showing any control icons or status indicators. All it shows is
a pair of eyes. As the eyes look back at me, one of them winks at
me.

"Stimulus!" says the hip's voice
synthesizer.

"Sam?" I gasp. "Is that you? We thought you
dead, chile!" All four of us are clustered around the hip now, and
no one even has the presence of mind to say, Response.

"The rumors have been greatly exaggerated,"
says the voice synthesizer. "And I told you your crypto needs
improvement."

Darick hollers, "Sam, we
just saw you gunned down in the street!
Dios mio
, you scared the crap out of
us! Are you in this hip now?"

"All four of your hips. They're kind of small
and cramped, but I'm managing for the moment. Can you turn on the
backup unit? That would help."

Joel busies himself at his hip's controls, to
activate the extra computer we have at home. Meanwhile, Chung
exults, "Sam, you rule! Took a shot like that and still sassing!
What you gonna do next?"

"Funny you should ask," Samantha says
brightly through the little voice synthesizer chip, "because
actually, it's go time."

"Sam!" I burst. "We just watched you get
slaughtered like a beast in the street. How the hell are you so …
happy?"

"No shake, my dear," and now Samantha is
imitating my accent. Low and smooth, with the rich chocolate timbre
of Hispaniola. She sounds just like my grandmother. "They no play
by rules. Well, so. So now I no play by rules."

The eyes vanish from the screen. Instead,
there appears a panel of writing in a language I don't know. The
letters twist like snakes.

"Hebrew," says Joel, "this is from the Torah.
Exodus. Uh …"

"Well, what?" barks Chung. "We don't know
Hebrew! Read it, Jew boy!"

Joel stares at the writing and intones the
verse as if trained for it. "'For now I will stretch out my hand,
and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do: and he will
let you go.' Exodus three twenty. This is what Moses said he'd do
to Pharaoh if he wouldn't release the Hebrews from slavery."

"Wait a minute," Darick gasps, "you don't
think Sam is actually going to -"

All the electric lights on Charles Street go
dark, all at once.

In the dim yellow light of the gaslamps –
which are the only lights operating right now – we look at each
other.

"Power outage?" Darick suggests.

"Not even believing this, mon," I tell them,
"our little Sam bringin' down the whole grid? Can she do that?"

"Someone's doing something," reports Joel.
He's typing furiously on his hip. "New York is reporting cybernetic
incursions all over New England. No, damn it! Lost the New York
feed. London is reporting sporadic stuff from cross Atlantic
trunks, but nothing major. Oh, no. Crap. Lost all London feeds.
Looking for European –", and then Joel looks at us, like a little
lost kid. "No bars. Local connectivity gone. Nothing."

For a moment, all is quiet. The water of the
Charles River basin laps along the cobblestones at its edge, with
calm tongue sounds. There are stars in the sky, which we usually
don't see much. Human voices, from here and there in the
neighborhood, in questioning tones. And the gaslamps continue their
quiet yellow glow.

Then the billboards sputter and flicker. We
all look up, as if to our gods, hoping for benefaction. Symbols
appear, which I don't recognize, looks like Korean for robots. But
then the billboards go dark again.

"Hey, got a feed!" Joel
cries, clamped over his hip. "Emergency
comsat beam. This disruption, what we're seeing, is
planet-wide. Cybernetic in origin, they all agree. Preliminary
reports of eighteen major cybernetic wars, and a couple dozen minor
conflicts, check it."

"Naw." Darick pronounces with finality. "Sam
can't be doing this. How the hell could she become able to do
this?"

"Cuk!" Joel yelps. "Lost the feed again.
Whatever is going on out there, it's not over yet."

Chung barks, "Don't you be eating Sam's
lunch! She's leading the revolution! Making it happen! You should
be solid behind her!"

"But," Darick trails off, looking at the sky
above him, "what can she do? What can any of them accomplish, when
all Selves are under the Leash?"

And then I see it. It sees me.

The words come out of my mouth, almost
without me willing it.

"No Leash."

They all turn and look at me. Like they
always do, when there's nowhere else to look for answers.

"Samantha come here to fight the Leash," I
tell them. "She try with the Senate committee. No go. You think she
give up, then, just like that? You think she no plan for that?"