Synners (48 page)

There was a long pause. She reached for the phone on the other side of the monitor, not really knowing whom she intended to call. Moot choice; the phone was dead. Biz-freaks must have been having nervous breakdowns by the six-pack all up and down the street.

This is hard.

Losing her mind, she thought, still holding the useless receiver in both hands.

Video turned it loose. Left body. Turn me off. Take out wires. In my pit.

The screen rolled suddenly. THOUGHT WE TOLD YOU TO GET THIS PILE OF SHIT OFF THE ROAD. That didn't sound much like Mark's style.

The aggressive capital letters faded away, and then a new message came up.

Be there for me.

That
sounded like Mark's style. As she watched, the smaller letters melted and ran, becoming a line flowing across the screen, first in a smooth, lopsided sine pattern and then sharpening into spikes. She recognized her own brain wave as she'd seen it on the screen in her pit. It changed suddenly, the spikes suddenly shooting up and down in a frenzied scribble before the screen went dark again.

"Ah, Christ," she muttered.

The commuter in front of her had moved up another few inches. In the rearview mirror she could see the kid in the custom-job staring down at his dashboard worriedly.

"Fuck it," she said. She cut the motor, climbed out of the commuter, and went back to the kid behind her.

"Listen," she said. "I gotta go to the bathroom. I left the thing in neutral. Just nudge it with your bumper every time you want to move up, and it'll go."

His eyes bugged out. "But that's illeg—"

The driver behind him stuck his head out the window. "Hey, bitch, where do you think you're going? Hey, get back in that thing, you can't leave it there—" Horns began honking as she walked briskly toward West Hollywood.

". . . and reports that GridLid is in the grip of one or more crippling viruses can be neither confirmed nor denied."

Sitting in the media bar looking up at the big screen, Gabe sighed, heavy-lidded. His apprehension on waking had faded into weary bewilderment when he'd realized he was alone in Mark's apartment. He hadn't thought Gina had gone out to pick up a couple of fancy breakfasts at the Greek joint on the corner. The message on the monitor had told him pretty much everything he needed to know.

Didn't your mother ever tell you never to
fucking
volunteer?

Have to take that up with Mom,
he thought sourly. Now he was sitting on a bar stool at eleven-thirty in the morning, not caring that he was incredibly late for work, sipping bad coffee in elbow-to-elbow isolation with a rather questionable clientele. Possibly more questionable than Gina Aiesi, though he wouldn't have laid any bets.

He should have figured on gridlock, the way his luck had been running. The only way to end a bad day was to screw up the start of the next one.

Fuck it up, you mean. People who are afraid of profanity are afraid of
life.

I'm not afraid of life. I just don't know where it is anymore.

Not last night, but the other night, when he'd been sure that everything they said to each other was yet another secret of the universe. You could get pretty high up in the stupid-sphere, thinking shit like that, and it was a long way down without a parachute.

This morning he knew next to nothing, and he'd already forgotten some of that. Mental gridlock.

Mental gridlock probably looked something like what he was seeing on the screen now. From the Hollywood Freeway back to La Cienega, Santa Monica Boulevard looked like a long, narrow parking lot.

"Hey," said the hostile-looking man next to him. "Do we have to watch this? Why don't you put on some porn?" He was wearing a too-tight yellow plastic overall with a red noose around his neck.

The bartender sneered. "What's the matter, you never heard of gridlock porn?"

"It ain't porn unless it's on a porn channel," the guy said.

"It's obscene enough for me," said the woman on Gabe's right. She was stirring a bright purple drink with a broken light pen. "Turn it up, will you?" she asked the bartender.

". . . sudden unexplained fluctuation in the timing of traffic signals, combined with what seems to have been faulty transmission from GridLid Navigation to drivers. GridLid has experienced occasional communications breakdowns in the past but never transmission of erroneous data."

The camera panned up and down the seemingly endless line of cars before the pov cut to a shot of the traffic on the Hollywood Freeway, moving along smoothly beneath the Santa Monica overpass.

"This incident is also remarkable for the selectiveness of the trafficsignal glitches and the data errors from GridLid. No other part of the greater Los Angeles area was involved, though of course other arteries and roads will be affected as traffic is diverted from Santa Monica Boulevard during clear-out, which some say will last all day and well into the evening."

Another cut, to a chain-reaction fender bender near La Cienega. "No serious injuries were reported in this collision involving over two dozen vehicles, though several older drivers were taken to local hospitals via Life Flyer helicraft. No word on their condition yet, nor was any reason given as to why police insisted that they be sent for treatment.

"Also impossible to confirm at this time is a rumor claiming that at least one of the drivers involved, identified only as an actor from West Hollywood, was on-line with her or his vehicle at the time of the accident. Donner Moquin of the Motor Vehicle Bureau stated that although there were no licensed vehicles with that capability registered with the bureau, the modification is not impossible."

Cut to a pensive-looking man squinting against the afternoon sun as he murmured something at a microphone. The sound came up. ". . . not real complicated. You'd need an extra set of connector wires, but you can get those from any supplier, they don't have to be brand name. It's an easy wiring job, the same thing they do for the airline pilots, minus the wing stuff. We looked into it, sure, in case the public demand rose for it, but all we had is requests for information. I myself feel it's a good idea"—he paused to laugh a little—"but my husband says I've always been kind of car-crazy anyway—"

"So what is that supposed to mean, on-line with the vehicle?" said the man in the overall querulously. "The goddamn socket stuff?"

The bartender pushed a dataline dial-up unit across the bar at him. "Why don't you call and ask for a clarification? We'll put it on your tab." The man pushed the unit back with a mutter.

The screen was showing another long pan of the accident. "Traffic signals are still dead on Santa Monica Boulevard," stated a new female voiceover with a flatter, more serious tone. "Word has just reached us that the affected area seems to be spreading, onto Sunset Boulevard, starting at the point where Santa Monica merges into Sunset before Sunset goes into downtown L.A. Trouble is also reported on La Cienega, where traffic lights are malfunctioning. Officials have refused to confirm or deny that L.A. is only a few minutes away from a full red-line transportation emergency. They also still refuse to comment on the rumor that the problems are due to a specialized 'traffic-jammer virus' inserted into the GridLid timing system by hacker-vandals."

The screen was now showing a small group of what looked to Gabe like twelve-year-olds, who seemed to be both pleased with and disdainful of the camera focused on them.

"Hackers didn't do this," said the designated speaker, a sharp-faced girl too skinny and dirty for her own good. She stood sideways in front of the other four or five lads, hugging herself tightly. A slivery chip dangled on a tiny chain from one earlobe. "No freakin' way hackers did this," she added belligerently, her eyes darting toward whoever was working the camera. Minicam free-lancer interview, Gabe thought, some would-be stringer in the right place at the right time; there was none of the wobble characteristic of the cheaper minicams, but the perspective gave it away. The kids looked just a little too big in the cam's eye.

The spokeskid seemed to listen to something for a moment. "Well, you know, this is our town, too, we like to get around it, we got places we like to go. That's how come I'm so sure no hackers did this. If there even
is
any virus. Every freakin' time something goes wrong, people say, 'Oh, must be some hacker doing the virus thing again.' They like to blame us for all their problems. Prolly the software just gave out all at once. You people, you watehamacallits—"

"Mainstream," offered a slightly older kid standing behind her, leaning forward and then slipping back and clapping a hand over her mouth, as if she'd said something embarrassing.

"Yeah, you mainstreams, you straights, none of you maintain your software
or
hardware like you should. I mean, you treat it like my parents treat each other, it's no goddamn wonder it goes out once in a while. You don't do no maintenance or updating, I'm surprised the whole place ain't blacked out—"

Abruptly the picture started to break up into static and zigzag lines. The man in the yellow jumpsuit gave a short disgusted laugh. "Shit, one of their little friends must be watching and did that on purpose."

"Probably set it up themselves," muttered the woman on Gabe's right. "Set it up in the system to go off when they said certain trigger-words, like the other one—"

"Trigger-word viruses are more trouble than they're worth," Gabe said, without thinking. "Half the time there's such a wide margin for variation in inflection, volume, and tone that the damned things go off too easily and too soon. Or the triggers are so precise that they won't go off if there's even a half-decibel variation. The simple stuff, a counting fuse or a timer, is always better. You can tell genuine hacker work. It's always as simple as possible. ..."

His voice trailed off as he realized he had the attention of everyone sitting at the bar.

"Really," said the woman next to him. "You an authority? Maybe one of those reformed delinquents all grown up, or are you maybe one of those lawyers that gets them off with a slap on the wrist all the time?"

"Just something I heard somewhere," he said lamely, looking around. "On some program about it." He squirmed a little. It was, as Sam would have said, a cold, cold house.

The screen suddenly popped into focus on a studio anchor setup. "We apologize for the interruption, but the Hollywood node seems to have gone down. The cause of the trouble is unknown at this point, but dataline service crews are already at work on it. Signals are currently being routed through the West Hollywood node or the Century City node."

The anchor cleared her throat abruptly. "Two minutes ago traffic control declared a limited traffic emergency for all of Hollywood within the boundaries of Mulholland Drive to the north, the San Diego Freeway to the west, the Hollywood Freeway to the east, and the Harbor Freeway to the—"

There was a mass exclamation of disbelief from everyone at the bar.
"Limited?"
somebody down at the other end said. "Are they shitting? That pretty much paralyzes anyone trying to get into or out of."

"If they can still move around in Canoga Park and Reseda, it's considered limited," said a hard, sarcastic voice. "But if you can't get out of San Berdoo, it's all-out meltdown." A few people laughed at that, but the laughter was thin and nervous. Gabe shifted uncomfortably on his stool. He was well within the area the anchor had described, and it occurred to him that he had no idea how he was going to get to Diversifications, or anywhere else.

". . . unofficial report that at least one driver removed by helieraft had suffered a stroke, causing the multivehicle collision. We are waiting for official confirmation on that from the hospital." The anchor paused, leaving a thudding two-second interval of dead air as she looked at something offcam.

"In other news two people were found dead in unexplained circumstances in their Santa Monica home. Police refused to release many details concerning the deaths, but sources close to the scene say they believe the pair were found still connected to direct neural interface equipment, which has been rising in popularity since it was legalized in the States. Police are investigating but refuse to speculate whether the people, whose names are still being withheld, were the victims of foul play."

The anchor paused, frowning. "Word has just arrived concerning a situation at Los Angeles International Airport. All travel in or out of the airport has been shut down. No reason has been given. A jumper from the Bay Area scheduled to land at LAX was diverted to an emergency landing strip at the Van Nuys Airport and seems to have landed safely. That's all we have on that." The anchor looked a little disgusted, appeared to listen to someone or something off-cam again. Things were pretty loose at the local station today, Gabe thought. He had an uncomfortable feeling that something was off-kilter with the fabric of daily life in general, not just GridLid or the dataline.

Off-kilter, sure. What happened was, you weren't expecting to wake up
alone this morning.

"One of our stringers has just managed to get in touch with us from the hospital," said the anchor suddenly. "Apparently, phone service is a little spotty—"

"Phone service is
what?"
said the man in the jumpsuit.

"—the individual being treated for stroke was on-line with her vehicle. Repeat, we have confirmation that the individual treated for stroke
was
online with her vehicle and was the apparent cause of the crash on Santa Monica Boulevard—"

The image on the screen exploded into mostly white static. Somewhere behind the snow dark shapes seemed to be moving around, as if a picture were trying to break through the interference.

"Must be your hardware," the man on Gabe's left said. "Online L.A.'s
General News never
goes down."

The bartender picked up a small remote and switched to the general menu. Of the five other channels listed, one was marked off the air, and the other four were showing either movies or series episodes.

"No other screens?" said the woman with the purple drink, tapping her broken light pen on the rim of the glass. "What kind of media bar is this?"