Rainbows End (22 page)

“Perhaps equally so.” But Robert couldn’t help smiling back.

A week passed. Most evenings, Robert had interviews with Zulfi Sharif. After school and sometimes on weekends, he and Juan worked together. Much of that was remote now. They were still flailing around for a semester project. More and more, Robert was intrigued with the problem of far coordination. Games, music, sports, it all got jittery beyond a few thousand miles and a couple dozen routers. The boy had bizarre plans for how they might put everything together. “We could do something with music,
manual
music. That’s lots easier than game synchronization.” Robert went for hours at a time without thinking about his demented, maimed condition.

These school projects were more interesting to the new Robert Gu than Sharif’s admiring interviews — and far more interesting than his occasional visits to UCSD. The library shredding had been temporarily suspended, apparently due to the demonstration and his own unintendedly dramatic appearance there. But without the demonstrators, the library was a dead place. Modern students didn’t have much use for it. There was just Winnie’s “Elder Cabal” up on the sixth floor, rebels whose cause was suddenly on hold.

Robert and Xiu Xiang had mastered most of the Epiphany defaults. Now when he looked at a real object in “just that way,” explanations would pop up. With the proper squint or stare at attendant icons, he got the added detail he wanted. Look at the object a different way, and he often could see through and beyond it! Xiu wasn’t as good as Robert with the visuals. On the other hand, if she didn’t get flustered, she was better at audio searches: when you heard a word you didn’t know, if you could tag it, then search results would appear automatically.
That
explained the marvelous vocabulary — and equally marvelous screwups — he noticed in the children’s language.

Miri — > Juan: You should tell him that the nondefaults are a lot harder. Juan — > Miri: Okay.

“You know, Dr. Gu, you and Xiu are, um, really good with the defaults. But we should work on the nondefaults, too.”

Xiang nodded. She was remote today, too, though not as realistically as Juan Orozco. Her image was perfectly solid, but her feet were melted into the bleacher bench in front of her, and occasionally he got glimpses of — background? Her apartment? He kidded her about that, but as usual when he made a joke, it just made her even more quiet.

Lena -> Juan, Miri, Xiu: What! What did he see? Miri — > Juan, Lena, Xiu: Not to worry. Xiu has a good background filter. Besides, you’re in the kitchen and she’s sitting in the living room.

Robert turned back to Juan. “So what are the most useful nondefaults?” “Well, there’s silent messaging. The bit rate is so low, it works when nothing else does.”

“Yes! I’ve read about sming. It’s like the old instant messaging, except no one can see you’re communicating.”

Juan nodded. “That’s how most people format it.” Lena — > Juan, Miri, Xiu: No! Let the SOB learn sming on his own! Miri — > Juan, Lena, Xiu: Please, Lena! Juan -> Lena, Miri, Xiu: It’s something everyone uses, ma’am. Lena — > Juan, Miri, Xiu: I said no! He’s already sneaky enough.

The boy hesitated.”… but it takes a lot of practice to do it smoothly. It can be more trouble than it’s worth when you get caught.” Maybe he was remembering run-ins with his teachers?

 

Xiang sat forward on the bench. She was leaning on some invisible piece of furniture. “Well, what are some other things?”

“Ah! Lots of stuff. If you override the defaults you can see in any direction you want. You can qualify default requests — like to make a query about something in an overlay. You can blend video from multiple viewpoints so you can ‘be’ where there is no physical viewpoint. That’s called ghosting. If you’re really slick, you can run simulations in real time and use the results as physical advice. That’s how the Radners do so well in baseball. And then there’s the problem of faking results if you hit a network soft spot, or if you want a sender to look more realistic — ” The boy rattled on, but now Robert was able enough to record the words; he would have to come back to this.

Lena — > Juan, Miri, Xiu: The monster’s eyes are glazing over. I think you’ve distracted him, Juan.

 

Xiu said, “Okay, let’s start with the easiest, Juan.”

“That would be moving attention from face front.” The boy talked them through some simple exercises. Robert had no idea how this looked to Xiu Xiang. After all, she was already remote. For himself, looking directly backwards was easy, especially if he took the view off his own shirt. But Juan didn’t want him to use mirror orientation; he said that would just be confusing once he moved on to other angles.

Without the defaults, things got very tedious. “I’ll spend my whole life just tapping in commands, Juan.” “Maybe if we use the eye menus,” Xiang said. Robert gave her an irritated look. “I am, I am!” Lena — > Xiu: Never criticize him. He’ll get back at you when it hurts the most. Xiang’s gaze dropped from his. He looked at Juan. “I never see
you
tapping your fingers.” “I’m a kid; I grew up with ensemble coding. Hey, even my mom mostly uses phantom typing.”

“Well, Xiu and I are retreads, Juan. We have learning plasticity and all that. Teach us the command gestures or eyeblinks or whatever.”

“Okay! But this is not like the standard gestures you’ve already learned. For the good stuff, everything is custom between you and your wearable. The skin sensors pick muscle twinges that other people can’t even see. You teach your Epiphany and it teaches you.”

Robert had read about this. It turned out to be just as weird as it sounded, a cross between learning to juggle and teaching some dumb animal to help you juggle! He and Xiu Xiang had about twenty minutes to make fools of themselves before the soccer teams came out to play. But that was long enough that now Robert could look all around himself with just a subtle shrug.

Juan was smiling. “You guys are really good, for — “
” — for oldfolks?” said Xiu.

Juan’s smile broadened. “Yeah.” He looked at Robert. “If you can do this maybe I can learn to put words together… Look, I gotta go help my ma. She’s running a tour this afternoon. See you all tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay,” said Xiang. “I should leave too. How is that most gracefully accomplished?”

“Ha! Most graceful takes practice — but I want it to look cool to anyone watching.” He pointed at the teams rowdying about on the soccer field. “For them, I mean. So how about if I iconify-and-guide you, Dr. Xiang?”

“Very good.”
Xiang’s image collapsed into a ruby point of light.

The boy stood and grinned at Robert. “I think I have the geometry good enough that no one has to cooperate on the receiving side.” His image climbed down the bleachers. His shadow matching was much better than Sharif normally managed. Xiang’s icon tagged along right above his shoulder. He reached the grass and walked away along the edge of the bleachers, his figure shortening in perspective.

And then abruptly, golden letters hung across Robert’s vision.
Xiang — > Gu: See you tomorrow!
Huh. So that’s what silent messaging looked like. Robert watched the two till they were out of sight. Lena — > Miri, Xiu: Wow! I can’t tell Juan’s image from the real people. That boy is clever. Miri — > Lena, Xiu: He did okay.

Robert had no more classes. He could go home now, too. There were plenty of rides available; the cars flocked to the traffic circle when the children were going home. But just now, Robert wasn’t keen on getting back to Fallbrook. He saw that Miri would be arriving home in a few minutes. Bob was on watch duty tonight — whatever that meant. Any run-in with Miri would bring Alice Gu into action. Robert was amazed that he’d ever thought his daughter-in-law was smooth and diplomatic. In a subtle way, she was scary. Or maybe it was simply that Robert realized that if Alice ever became determined, he would be exiled to “Rainbows End.” (He’d never been able to decide if that spelling was the work of an everyday illiterate or someone who really understood the place.)

Okay, so hang around school and watch. There were dynamics here that were unchanged since his childhood, perhaps unchanged since the beginning of human history. He would rebuild his sense of superiority. He climbed to the south corner of the bleachers, far above the kids forming up soccer teams, and even clear of the secretive children who sat at the other end making barely veiled jokes about everyone else.

Miri — > Lena, Xiu: He should be going home now. Lena — > Miri, Xiu: Not my monster. See the far look in his eyes? He’s thinking about everything that’s happened, figuring out just how to cause Xiu grief.

 

Xiu — > Lena, Miri: He has seemed pretty normal since he went crazy in shop class. Xiu — > Lena, Miri: No, Lena, please use silent messaging. I know I just sat down by you at the kitchen table. But I want to get some practice.

Lena — > Miri: Sigh. Xiu’s a dear, but she can be so obsessive. Xiu — > Lena: Yoo-hoo, Lena! What are you typing to Miri?

The sun was lowering behind him, and the shadow of the bleachers extended partway onto the field. He had a naked-eye view of most of the campus. In fact, the buildings looked like junk, the sort of thing you used to buy mail-order if you needed some extra storage in your backyard. But it wasn’t all new junk. The school’s main auditorium was wood, rebuilt here and there with plastic. According to the labels he called up on overlay, it had originally been a pavilion for showing horses!

Xiu — > Lena, Miri: I think he’s just training his Epiphany.

Focus on the soccer field. That looked like something from Bobby’s school years — if you didn’t mind the fact that there were no line marks or goals. Robert brought up the sports view, and now he could see the usual field layout. The soccer kids moved out onto the field. They wore crash equipment, real helmets, quite unlike what he remembered. The kids’ high-pitched voices wafted direct to him without any magic of modern electronics. They circled around midfield, seemed to be listening to someone.

With a whoop, the teams rushed toward each other, chasing — what?

An unseen ball? Robert searched frantically through his options, saw a flickering parade of possible overlays.
Aha
! Now the teams had spectacular uniforms, and there were umpires. In the bleachers, there was a scattering of adults — teachers? parents? — what you’d expect for a contest that was more a class event than varsity sport.

Xiu — > Lena, Miri: What is that game?
Miri — > Lena, Xiu: Egan soccer.
Xiu — > Lena, Miri: He’s just watching the game, Lena.
Lena — > Miri, Xiu: Maybe.

Xiu — > Lena, Miri: I think Juan is right about him, Lena. Let me talk to him. You’d still be covered.

Xiu — > Lena: Don’t be that way.
Robert still couldn’t see the soccer ball. Instead, the field was now covered by a golden fog. In places it came almost to the players’ waists. Tiny numbers floated within the mist, changing with the thickness and brightness of the glow. When the players of opposing teams rushed into close contact, the glow flared brightly, and the children would angle around each other as if trying to line up a kick. And then the light would erupt like an arc of wildfire across the field.

Xiu — > Lena, Miri: What about Sharif, Miri? You use him to talk to Robert, right?

Miri — > Lena, Xiu: Yes. I thought Sharif would be a perfect cat’s-paw. He has the right academic background to talk to Robert. And he has terrible personal hygiene! It was easy to take him over. Trouble is, so did somebody else. Mostly we’re getting in each other’s way. Hey!

Xiu — > Lena, Miri: I’ve lost all the close-up views on your grandfather. Miri — > Lena, Xiu: We’ve lost local audio, too. That was seamless. I didn’t know Robert was that swift.

 

Lena — > Miri, Xiu: I warned you.

One child broke away from the others and raced along the golden fire, somehow guessing just where and when it would flare up. The girl gave an odd, flailing kick — and landed on her rear. For an instant there was a light in the nearest goal, so sharp and intense it was as if all the fog had suddenly coalesced into the fuzzy image of a soccer ball. Everybody was shouting, even the phantom adults in the bleachers.

Robert made a grumpy noise. Even something as simple as a schoolyard game didn’t make sense. He pulled at his cuff, trying to get a clearer view.

“It’s not your fault, my man. You’re seeing properly.” The voice seemed to be coming from right beside him. Robert glanced over, but there was no body to keep the voice company. He stared into the empty space, and after a moment, the voice continued. “Just look at the scoreboard. Everything is fuzzy about this game, even the score.” On the big scoreboard facing the bleachers, the goal was recorded as 0.97. “I do think that should be rounded to one. That was an excellent, near-certain goal the girl kicked.” On the field, the teams had retreated to their sides. Another phantom kickoff was in progress.

Robert kept his eyes on the action below. He didn’t reply to the helpful voice. “You don’t recognize the game, do you, Professor? It’s Egan soccer. See — ” A reference floated across his vision, everything anyone could want to know about Egan soccer. Out on the field, three kids had fallen over, and two had collided. “Of course,” the voice continued, “it’s really just an approximation to the ideal.”

“I’ll bet,” said Robert, and he almost smiled. The stranger’s tone was confiding, the speech affected — and almost every sentence was a mild put-down. It was a pleasure to run into a type he understood so well. He turned and looked into the empty space. “Run along, kid. You’re a long way from being able to play head games with me.”

“I don’t play games, my man.” The reply started out angry, segued back to patronizing good humor. “You are an interesting case, Robert Gu. I’m used to manipulating people, but usually through intermediaries. I’m much too busy to chat with bottom dwellers directly. But you intrigue me.”

Robert pretended to watch the game, but the voice continued, “I know what’s eating you up inside. I know how much it bothers you that you can’t make poetry anymore.”