Existence (45 page)

RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP IS APPRECIATED.

No doubt about it. That’s what the shimmer of fleeting characters said.

Passersby and shoppers were turning to notice, nudging their neighbors and waggling their hands to toss virt-alerts down the street. Crowds of onlookers formed in time to catch the next flicker-pronouncement, as a fat man sidled next to a broad-shouldered woman with orange-striped hair. Their combined pixel-garments proclaimed—

THE TANG EMPERORS ENCOURAGED CREATIVITY.

Watching from a niche between a hair salon and a stall offering pungent chicktish meat, Mei Ling reflexively rocked the baby in his sling carrier, while wondering. Why did these young people go to such lengths to stay disconnected from their messages, preserving their ability to deny responsibility, when the meanings seemed so innocent? So harmless?

Oh,
she realized,
the real essence must lie elsewhere. In vir-space.

Mei Ling pulled out the set of cheap augmented reality spectacles that she had purchased from a vendor, just a little while ago. It seemed a reasonable use of cash, in an era when so much of the world lay beyond sight of normal eyes. Especially with Xiang Bin gone on his strange adventure beyond the sea. So long as he had a job, helping make that strange, demon-infested stone perform tricks for the penguin creature, she had money. Enough to pay off some repairs to their salvaged shorestead home and even take Xiao En on an early morning shopping expedition into the bustling city, where giant arcology pyramids loomed upward to block half the sky, proclaiming the greatness of the world’s new superpower.

Mei Ling had chosen this time because such a large portion of the planet’s population was watching proceedings at the Artifact Conference in America that she figured the streets would be largely empty. But it turned out that the event was in recess for several hours, which meant people were pouring outdoors to do important shopping or business, or get a little air. It made the boulevards especially crowded—and ideal for this kind of youth demonstration.

Slipping on the wraparound goggles, Mei Ling felt acutely aware of how long it had been since she and Xiang Bin moved out to the tidal flats and ruined shoreline of the Huangpu, where the world had only one “layer”—gritty, hardscrabble reality. That made her several tech-generations out of date. The ailectronics salesman had been helpful, patient … and a little too flirtatious … while tuning the unit to her rusty GIBAAR skills. It was difficult to rediscover the knack, even with his help. Like remembering how to walk after too long a convalescence in bed.

Gaze. Interest. Blink. Allocate Attention. Repeat.

The most basic way to vir, if you don’t have any of the other tools.

She had no fingernail tappers. No clickers and scrollers, planted in the teeth. No subvocal pickups, to read the half-spoken words shaped by throat and mouth. Not even an old-fashioned hand-keyboard or twiddler. And certainly none of the fancy-scary new cephalo sensors that would take commands straight off the brain. Without any of that, she had to make do—choosing from a range of menus and command icons that the spectacles created across the inner surface of both lenses, seeming to float in front of the real-life street scene.

By turning her
gaze
to look right at a search icon … and by actually being
interested
(which affected the dilation of her pupils and blood flow in the retina) … she caused that symbol to light up. There followed a well timed, one-two
blink
of the left eye then right …

On her third try, a new window-menu blossomed, allowing her to allocate her attention … to pick from a range of sub-options. And she chose one called
Overlayers
.

Immediately, the specs laid faint lines across the real world, bordering the pavement and curb, the fringe of each building and vendor stall—anything real that might become a dangerous obstacle or tripping hazard to a person walking about. Also outlined—the people and vehicles moving around her. Each now carried a slim aura. Especially those heading in her direction, which throbbed a little in the shade that was called
collision-warning yellow.

These edge lines—clearly demarcated rims and boundaries of the real world—were inviolate. They weren’t supposed to change, no matter what level of vir-space you chose—it took a real hacker to mess with them.

As for the rest of visual reality, the textures, colors, and backgrounds? Well, there were a million ways to play with those, from covering all the building walls with jungle vines, to filling the world with imaginary water, like sunken Atlantis, to giving every passerby the skin tones of lizard-people from Mars. You name it, and some teenager or bored office worker or semiautonomous cre-ai-tivity drone must have already fashioned an overlay to bring that fantasy cosmos into being.

Mei Ling wasn’t trying for any of those realms—she didn’t know the addresses, for one thing, and had no interest in searching out ways to become immersed in someone else’s favorite mirage. Instead, she tried simply stepping
up
through the most basic levels, one at a time—first passing through the Public Safety layers, where children or the handicapped could view the world conveniently captioned in simple terms, with friendly risk-avoidance alerts and helpful hands, pointing toward the nearest sources of realtime help.

Then came useful tiers, where all the buildings and storefronts were marked with essential information about location, products, and accountability codes. Or you could zoom-magnify anything that caught your interest. On strata twelve through sixteen, everyone in sight wore basic nametags, or ID badges identifying their professions. Otherwise, reality was left quite bare.

Up at stratum thirty, it suddenly became hard to see, as the air filled with yellow and pink and green notecards—
Post-its
—that floated around every shop and street corner, conveying anything from meet-me memos to traffic curses to caustic commentaries on a restaurant’s cuisine. And prayers.

Mei Ling experimented by raising her hand and drawing in the air with a finger. As the specs followed her movements and responded, a brand-new Post-it appeared, bearing the name of her husband. Peng Xiang Bin. She then added characters that constituted an incantation for luck. When Mei Ling brought her hand down, the tiny virt fluttered away and seemed to fade into the maelstrom. This was what made stratum thirty almost useless for anything
but
prayer. Or curses. All visitors could see
everything
that was ever left there … which meant no one could see anything at all.

Do people really live like this all the time? Wading through the world, immersed in pretend things?
She could see how this kind of tool would be useful on occasion. But she could take off the specs at any moment. What about those who got fitted with contaict lenses, or even the new eyeball implants? The very thought made her shudder.

At level forty, a lot of walls disappeared. Most of the buildings seemed to go transparent, or at least depict animated floorplans concocted from public records. These ranged from detailed inner views—of a nearby department store—with every display and mannequin appearing eager to perform, all the way to floors and offices that were blocked by barriers, in varied shades of gray, some of them with glowing locks. You could look inside—if you had some kind of key.

Strata fifty through one hundred were for advertising, and at one point Mei Ling quailed back, as all the normal dampers vanished. Messages and come-ons seemed to roar at her from every shop front and store awning. Blasts of sound rocked the spec-rims till they almost flew off her ears, and she had to concentrate hard just to blink her way out of there! Fortunately, most advir-levels were selective, even polite. Stratum ninety, for example, offered her discreet, personalized discounts on baby formula and inexpensive shoes, plus a special on a massage-makeover in
that shop over there,
at a price that seemed so reasonable, she could nearly afford it! The proprietor would even fetch a nanny-grandma in five minutes to watch the baby.

But no. Not with the sudden comfort of Xiang Bin’s paycheck so new and unaccustomed. Maybe another time.

Anyway, Mei Ling realized that she had been idly following the gaggle of youthful demonstrators, awkwardly picking her way across each avenue, while making sure that Xiao En’s bottle didn’t fall to the filthy sidewalk. A pedicab driver shouted and Mei Ling jumped back, heart pounding, especially on realizing—she had lost track of where she was, in an unfamiliar part of town.

It is not possible to get lost wearing specs,
she reminded herself. Level ten would always provide a handy guide arrow, aiming you down the quickest path to anywhere in the world you wanted to go.

That is, if I knew where he was right now.

If he weren’t swallowed up by the secret intrigues of powerful men.

Continuing to scroll upward through slices of the world, she saw the level counter skip whole swathes of vir-spaces where she wasn’t allowed. You had to be a member of some affinity group to see those overlayers.

I recall that stratum two hundred and fifty was for street gossip.

Only instead, S-250 populated the boulevard with cartoon figures—colorful, high contrast versions of people walking by, with speech balloons floating above many of their heads. Some balloons were filled with written words. Others—nothing but gray static.
Oh, yes. This layer is for eavesdropping, if people don’t care enough to set up a privacy block. The gossip level must have been S-350.

Mei Ling found she enjoyed this chance to recover her old knack of blink-navigation, even though the baby was starting to get crabby, and her shoulder bag full of purchases was heavy, and really, maybe it was time to set off for home.

At least she no longer had to ratchet through the layers linearly, one at a time, like a complete neo. A simple preference choice now let her view the virld as a three dimensional
spiderweb
of jump choices, stretching in all directions. It took just a look, a squint and wink to hop to the level she wanted, where—

—Post-its of another kind flurried about. Voice, text, and vid
twips
kept zooming in, attaching themselves to the youthful demonstrators, sent by anonymous bystanders, or even people who were viewing the event from thousands of kilometers away.

Smart-aleck kids,
one note commented.
As if their generation knows a thing about struggle and revolution

Another groused.

Back in 2025 I was in the New Red Guards we really knew how to light up a street ruckus! Wore masks that screwed facial recog cams …

Yep. Street gossip. Finally, Mei Ling found something related to her interest—a simple query note.

WHAT are they demonstrating about?

Which had an even simpler comment addendum attached to it, anonymously recommending a clickover to:

0847lals0xldo098-899as0004-hahd-dorad087

She blinked her way to that address … and found the street scene transformed once again.

The young people now wore costumes in seventeenth-century Shun Dynasty style, like followers of the great rebel leader Li Zicheng. Mei Ling recognized the Peoples’ Militia fashion from a historical romance she had watched. Because he sought to free the masses from feudal oppression, Li Zicheng was officially proclaimed a “hero of the Chinese masses” by Chairman Mao himself, a century ago.
Still, I’m surprised that today’s rich and powerful lords of the Beneficent Patriarchy approve of people invoking his memory,
she thought.

Up and down the street, onlookers and pedestrians were also transformed, mostly by replacing their twenty-first century streetwear with shabby peasant clothing from the 1600s. Not exactly flattering, but she got the implied message.
We’re all clueless plebeians. Thanks a lot
.

She was tempted to try accessing a nearby cam-view, and look down upon herself transformed, but decided—it really wasn’t worth the effort. Anyway, she could finally see the answer to her question. Over the demonstrators’ heads, there now floated huge banners that matched their gaily colored costumes.

That Which Is Not Specifically Forbidden
*

Is Automatically Allowed!

* (for just cause, by a sovereign and rightful legislature)

Mei Ling had heard that phrase before. She strained to remember—and that effort apparently triggered a search response from the mesh-spectacles. She winced as a disembodied voice started lecturing.

“Eighteen years ago, human rights groups demanded that this principle be enshrined in the famous International Big Deal, firmly and finally rejecting the opposite tradition long held by a majority of human societies, that anything not specifically allowed must be assumed to be forbidden.

“Activists called this change in tenets even more important and fundamental than freedom of speech. Some social psychologists have since deemed the reform futile, since it concerns a deep-seated cultural assumption, rather than a point of law.

“In return for granting this principle, the world’s professional guilds and aristocratic powers were able to win formal acceptance of the Estates…”

Mei Ling succeeded in cutting off the pedantic lecture, which wasn’t much help anyway. The same problem held for another pair of student virbanners, waving in an ersatz wind—

All Human Beings—Even Leaders—

Are Inherently Delusional

and

Criticism Is the Only Known

Antidote to Error

Of course, there were ways to follow up. An infinite sea of definitions, explanations, and commentaries, even suitable for a poorly educated woman. So, was the demonstration meant to lure onlookers into
study
? Or might all this vagueness be the real point of the youths’ demonstration? Messing with peoples’ heads, aggravating their elders with the ever-elusive obscurity of their protest?