"I called my boyfriend. But he flaked out on me," she says.
"Another thrasher?"
"The same."
"You made the same mistake I made once," he says.
"What"s that?"
"Mixing business with pleasure. Going out with a colleague. It gets very confusing."
"Yeah. I see what you mean." She"s not exactly sure what a colleague is.
"I was thinking that we should be partners," she says.
She"s expecting him to laugh at her. But instead he grins and nods his head slightly. "The same thing occurred to me. But I"d have to think about how it would work."
She is astounded that he would actually be thinking this. Then she gets the sap factor under control and realizes: He"s waffling. Which means he"s probably lying. This is probably going to end with him trying to get her into bed.
"I gotta go," she says. "Gotta get home."
Now we"ll see how fast he loses interest in the partnership concept. She turns her back on him.
Suddenly, they are impaled on Hong Kong robot spotlights one more time.
Y.T. feels a sharp bruising pain in her ribs, as though someone punched her. But it wasn"t Hiro. He is an unpredictable freak who carries swords, but she can smell chick-punchers a mile off.
"Ow!" she says, twisting away from the impact. She looks down to see a small heavy object bouncing on the ground at their feet. Out in the street, an ancient taxi squeals its tires, getting the h.e.l.l out of there. A jeek is hanging out the rear window, shaking his fist at them. He must have thrown a rock at her.
Except it"s not a rock. The heavy thing at her feet, the thing that just bounced off of Y.T."s ribcage, is a hand grenade. She stares for a second, recognizing it, a well-known cartoon icon made real.
Then her feet get knocked out from under her, too fast really to hurt. And just when she"s getting reoriented to that, there is a painfully loud bang from another part of the parking lot.
And then everything finally stops long enough to be seen and understood.
The Rat Thing has stopped. Which they never do. It"s part of their mystery that you never get to see them, they move so fast. No one knows what they look like. No one except for Y.T. and Hiro, now.
It"s bigger than she imagined. The body is Rottweiler-sized, segmented into overlapping hard plates like those of a rhinoceros. The legs are long, curled way up to deliver power, like a cheetah"s. It must be the tail that makes people refer to it as a Rat Thing, because that"s the only ratlike part-incredibly long and flexible. But it looks like a rat"s tail with the flesh eaten away by acid, because it just consists of segments, hundreds of them neatly plugged together, like vertebrae.
"Jesus H. Christ!" Hiro says. And she knows, from that, that he"s never seen one either.
Right now, the tail is coiled and piled around on top of the Rat Thing"s body like a rope that has fallen out of a tree. Parts of it are trying to move, other parts of it look dead and inert. The legs are moving one by one, spasmodically, not acting in concert. The whole thing just looks terribly wrong, like footage of an airplane that has had its tail blown off, trying to maneuver for a landing. Even someone who is not an engineer can see that it has gone all perverse and twisted.
The tail writhes and lashes like a snake, uncoils itself, rises up off the Rat Thing"s body, gets out of the way of its legs. But still the legs have problems; it can"t get itself up.
"Y.T.," Hiro is saying, "don"t."
She does. One footstep at a time, she approaches the Rat Thing.
"It"s dangerous, in case you hadn"t noticed," Hiro says, following her a few paces behind. "They say it has biological components."
"Biological components?"
"Animal parts. So it might be unpredictable."
She likes animals. She keeps walking.
She"s seeing it better now. It"s not all armor and muscle. A lot of it actually looks kind of flimsy. It has short stubby winglike things projecting from its body: A big one from each shoulder and a row of smaller ones down the length of its spine, like on a stegosaurus. Her Knight Visions tell her that these things are hot enough to bake pizzas on. As she approaches, they seem to unfold and grow.
They are blooming like flowers in an educational film, spreading and unfolding to reveal a fine complicated internal structure that has been all collapsed together inside. Each stubby wing splits off into little miniature copies of itself, and each of those in turn splits off into more smaller copies and so on forever. The smallest ones are just tiny bits of foil, so small that, from a distance, the edges look fuzzy.
It is continuing to get hotter. The little wings are almost red hot now. Y.T. slides her goggles up onto her forehead and cups her hands around her face to block out the surrounding lights, and sure enough she can see them beginning to make a dull brownish glow, like an electric stove element that has just been turned on. The gra.s.s underneath the Rat Thing is beginning to smoke.
"Careful. Supposedly they have really nasty isotopes inside," Hiro says behind her. He has come up a little closer now, but he"s still hanging way back.
"What"s an isotope?"
"A radioactive substance that makes heat. That"s its energy source."
"How do you turn it off?"
"You don"t. It keeps making heat until it melts."
Y.T. is only a few feet away from the Rat Thing now, and she can feel the heat on her cheeks. The wings have unfolded as far as they can go. At their roots they are a bright yellow-orange, fading out through red and brown to their delicate edges, which are still dark. The acrid smoke of the burning gra.s.s obscures some of the details.
She thinks: The edges of the wings look like something I"ve seen before. They look like the thin metal vanes that run up the outside of a window air conditioner, the ones that you can write your name in by mashing them down with your finger.
Or like the radiator on a car. The fan blows air over the radiator to cool off the engine.
"It"s got radiators," she says. "The Rat Thing has got radiators to cool off." She"s gathering intel right at this very moment.
But it"s not cooling off. It"s just getting hotter.
Y.T., surfs through traffic jams for a living. That"s her economic niche: beating the traffic. And she knows that a car doesn"t boil over when it is speeding down an open freeway. It boils over when it is stopped in traffic. Because when it sits still, not enough air is being blown over the radiator.
That"s what"s happening to the Rat Thing right now. It has to keep moving, keep forcing air over its radiators, or else it overheats and melts down.
"Cool," she says. "I wonder if it"s going to blow up or what."
The body converges to a sharp nose. In the front it bends down sharply, and there is a black gla.s.s canopy, raked sharply like the windshield of a fighter plane. If the Rat Thing has eyes, this is where it looks out.
Under that, where the jaw should be are the remains of some kind of mechanical stuff that has been mostly blown off by the explosion of the grenade.
The black gla.s.s windshield-or facemask, or whatever you call it-has a hole blown through it. Big enough that Y.T. could put her hand through. On the other side of that hole, it"s dark and she can"t see much, especially so close to the bright orange glare coming from the radiators. But she can see that red stuff is coming out from inside. And it ain"t no Dexron II. The Rat Thing is hurt and it"s bleeding.
"This thing is real," she says. "It"s got blood in its veins?" She"s thinking This is intel. This is intel. I can make money off this with my pardner-my pod-Hiro.
Then she thinks: The poor thing is burning itself alive.
"Don"t do it. Don"t touch it, Y.T.," Hiro says. She steps right up to it, flips her goggles down to protect her face from the heat. The Rat Thing"s legs stop their spasmodic movements, as though waiting for her.
She bends down and grabs its front legs. They react, tightening their pushrod muscles against the pull of her hands. It"s exactly like grabbing a dog by the front legs and asking it to dance. This thing is alive. It reacts to her. She knows.
She looks up at Hiro, just to make sure he"s taking this all in. He is.
"Jerk!" she says. "I stick my neck out and say I want to be your partner, and you say you want to think about it? What"s your problem, I"m not good enough to work with you?"
She leans back and begins dragging the Rat Thing backward across the Lawngrid. It"s incredibly light. No wonder it can run so fast. She could pick it up, if she felt like burning herself alive. As she drags it backward toward the doggie door, it brands a blackened, smoking trail into the lawngrid. She can see steam rising up out of her coverall, old sweat and stuff boiling out of the fabric. She"s small enough to fit through the doggie door-another thing she can do and Hiro can"t. Usually these things are locked, she"s tried to mess with them. But this one is opened.
Inside, the franchise is bright, white, robot-polished floors. A few feet from the doggie door is what looks like a black washing machine. This is the Rat Thing"s hutch, where it lurks in darkness and privacy, waiting for a job to do. It is wired into the franchise by a thick cable coming out of the wall. Right now, the hutch"s door is hanging open, which is another thing she"s never seen before. And steam is rolling out from inside of it.
Not steam. Cold stuff. Like when you open your freezer door on a humid day. She pushes the Rat Thing into its hutch. Some kind of cold liquid sprays out of all the walls and bursts into steam before it even reaches the Rat Thing"s body, and the steam comes blasting out the front of the hutch so powerfully that it knocks her on her a.s.s.
The long tail is strung out the front of the hutch, across the floor, and out through the doggie door. She picks up part of it, the sharp machine-tooled edges of its vertebrae pinching her gloves.
Suddenly it tenses, comes alive, vibrates for a second. She jerks her hands back. The tail shoots back inside the hutch like a rubber band snapping. She can"t even see it move. Then the hutch door slams shut. A janitor robot, a Hoover with a brain, hums out of another doorway to clean the long streaks of blood off the floor.
Above her, hanging on the foyer wall facing the main entrance, is a framed poster with a garland of well-browned jasmine blossoms hung around it. It consists of a photo of the wildly grinning Mr. Lee, with the usual statement underneath: WELCOME!It is my pleasure to welcome all quality folks to visiting of Hong Kong. Whether seriously in business or on a fun-loving hijink, make yourself totally homely in this meager environment. If any aspect is not utterly harmonious, gratefully bring it to my notice and I shall strive to earn your satisfaction.We of Greater Hong Kong take many prides in our tiny nation"s extravagant growth. The ones who saw our isle as a morsel of Red China"s pleasure have struck their faces in keen astonishment to see many great so-called powers of the olden guard reel in dismay before our leaping strides and charged-up hustling, freewheeling idiom of high-tech personal accomplishment and betterment of all peoples. The potentials of all ethnic races and anthropologies to merge under a banner of the Three Principles to follow 1. Information, information, information!
2. Totally fair marketeering!
3. Strict ecology!
have been peerless in the history of economic strife. have been peerless in the history of economic strife. Who would disdain to live under this flowing banner? If you have not attained your Hong Kong citizenship, apply for a pa.s.sport now! In this month, the usual fee of HK$100 will be kindly neglected. Fill out a coupon (below) now. If coupons are lacking, dial 1-800-HONG KONG instantly to apply from the help of our wizened operators. Who would disdain to live under this flowing banner? If you have not attained your Hong Kong citizenship, apply for a pa.s.sport now! In this month, the usual fee of HK$100 will be kindly neglected. Fill out a coupon (below) now. If coupons are lacking, dial 1-800-HONG KONG instantly to apply from the help of our wizened operators.Mr. Lee"s Greater Hong Kong is a private, wholly extraterritorial, sovereign, quasi-national ent.i.ty not recognized by any other nationalities and in no way affiliated with the former Crown Colony of Hong Kong, which is part of the People"s Republic of China. The People"s Republic of China admits or accepts no responsibility for Mr. Lee, the Government of Greater Hong Kong, Or any of the citizens thereof, or for any violations of local law, personal injury, or property damage occurring in territories, buildings, munic.i.p.alities, inst.i.tutions, or real estate owned, occupied, or claimed by Mr. Lee"s Greater Hong Kong.Join us instantly!Your enterprising partner,Mr. Lee Back in his cool little house, Semi-Autonomous Guard Unit #A-367 is howling.
Outside in the yard, it was very hot and he felt bad. Whenever he is out in the yard, he gets hot unless he keeps running. When he got hurt and had to lie down for a long time, he felt hotter than he had ever been before.
Now he doesn"t feel hot anymore. But he is still hurt. He is howling his injured howl. He is telling all the neighbor doggies that he needs help. They feel sad and upset and repeat his howl and pa.s.s it along to all the rest of the doggies.
Soon he hears the vet"s car approaching. The nice vet will come and make him feel better.
He starts barking again. He is telling all the other doggies about how the bad strangers came and hurt him. And how hot it was out in the yard when he had to lie down. And how the nice girl helped him and took him back to his cool house.
Right in front of the Hong Kong franchise, Y.T. notices a black Town Car that has been sitting there for a while. She doesn"t have to see the plates to know it"s Mafia. Only the Mafia drives cars like that. The windows are blackened, but she knows someone"s in there keeping an eye on her. How do they do it? You see these Town Cars everywhere, but you never see them move, never see them get anyplace. She"s not even sure they have engines in them.
"Okay. Sorry," Hiro says. "I keep my own thing going, but we have a partnership for any intel you can dig up. Fifty-fifty split."
"Deal," she says, climbing onto her plank.
"Call me anytime. You have my card."
"Hey, that reminds me. Your card said you"re into the three Ms of software."
"Yeah. Music, movies, and microcode."
"You heard of Vitaly Chern.o.byl and the Meltdowns?"
"No. Is that a band?"
"Yeah. It"s the greatest band. You should check it out, homeboy, it"s going to be the next big thing."
She coasts out onto the road and poons an Audi with Blooming Greens license plates. It ought to take her home. Mom"s probably in bed, pretending to sleep, being worried.
Half a block from the entrance to Blooming Greens, she unpoons the Audi and coasts into a McDonald"s. She goes into the ladies". It has a hung ceiling. She stands on the seat of the third toilet, pushes up one of the ceiling tiles, moves it aside. A cotton sleeve tumbles out, bearing a delicate floral print. She pulls on it and hauls down the whole ensemble, the blouse, the pleated skirt, underwear from Vicky"s, the leather shoes, the necklace and earrings, even a f.u.c.king purse. She takes off her RadiKS coverall, wads it up, sticks it into the ceiling, replaces the loose tile. Then she puts on the ensemble. Now she looks just like she did when she had breakfast with Mom this morning. She carries her plank down the street to Blooming Greens, where it"s legal to carry them but not to put them on the "crete. She flashes her pa.s.sport at the border post, walks a quarter of a mile down crisp new sidewalks, and up to the house where the porch light is on.
Mom"s sitting in the den, in front of her computer, as usual. Mom works for the Feds. Feds don"t make much money, but they have to work hard, to show their loyalty.
Y.T. goes in and looks at her mother, who has slumped down in her chair, put her hands around her face almost like she"s vogueing, put bare stockinged feet up. She wears these awful cheap Fed stockings that are like scouring cloth, and when she walks, her thighs rub together underneath her skirt and make a rasping noise. There is a heavy-duty Ziploc bag on the table, full of water that used to be ice a couple of hours ago. Y.T. looks at Mom"s left arm. She has rolled up her sleeve to expose the fresh bruise, just above her elbow, where they put the blood-pressure cuff. Weekly Fed polygraph test.
"Is that you?" Mom shouts, not realizing that Y.T."s in the room.
Y.T. retreats into the kitchen so she won"t surprise her mother. "Yeah, Mom," she shouts back. "How was your day?"
"I"m tired," Mom says. It"s what she always says.
Y.T. pinches a beer from the fridge and starts running a hot bath. It makes a roaring sound that relaxes her, like the white-noise generator on Mom"s nightstand.
The Nipponese businessman lies cut in segments on The Black Sun"s floor. Surprisingly (he looks so real when he"s in one piece), no flesh, blood, or organs are visible through the new cross-sections that Hiro"s sword made through his body. He is nothing more than a thin sh.e.l.l of epidermis, an incredibly complex inflatable doll. But the air does not rush out of him, he fails to collapse, and you can look into the aperture of a sword cut and see, instead of bones and meat, the back of the skin on the other side.
It breaks the metaphor. The avatar is not acting like a real body. It reminds all The Black Sun"s patrons that they are living in a fantasy world. People hate to be reminded of this.
When Hiro wrote The Black Sun"s sword-fighting algorithms-code that was later picked up and adopted by the entire Metaverse-he discovered that there was no good way to handle the aftermath. Avatars are not supposed to die. Not supposed to fall apart. The creators of the Metaverse had not been morbid enough to foresee a demand for this kind of thing. But the whole point of a sword fight is to cut someone up and kill them. So Hiro had to kludge something together, in order that the Metaverse would not, over time, become littered with inert, dismembered avatars that never decayed.
So the first thing that happens, when someone loses a sword fight, is that his computer gets disconnected from the global network that is the Metaverse. He gets chucked right out of the system. It is the closest simulation of death that the Metaverse can offer, but all it really does is cause the user a lot of annoyance.
Furthermore, the user finds that he can"t get back into the Metaverse for a few minutes. He can"t log back on. This is because his avatar, dismembered, is still in the Metaverse, and it"s a rule that your avatar can"t exist in two places at once. So the user can"t get back in until his avatar has been disposed of.
Disposal of hacked-up avatars is taken care of by Graveyard Daemons, a new Metaverse feature that Hiro had to invent. They are small lithe persons swathed in black, like ninjas, not even their eyes showing. They are quiet and efficient. Even as Hiro is stepping back from the hacked-up body of his former opponent, they are emerging from invisible trapdoors in The Black Sun"s floor, climbing up out of the netherworld, converging on the fallen businessman. Within seconds, they have stashed the body parts into black bags. Then they climb back down through their secret trapdoors and vanish into hidden tunnels beneath The Black Sun"s floor. A couple of curious patrons try to follow them, try to pry open the trapdoors, but their avatars" fingers find nothing but smooth matte black. The tunnel system is accessible only to the Graveyard Daemons.
And, incidentally, to Hiro. But he rarely uses it.
The Graveyard Daemons will take the avatar to the Pyre, an eternal, underground bonfire beneath the center of The Black Sun, and burn it. As soon as the flames consume the avatar, it will vanish from the Metaverse, and then its owner will be able to sign on as usual, creating a new avatar to run around in. But, hopefully, he will be more cautious and polite the next time around.
Hiro looks up into the circle of applauding, whistling, and cheering avatars and notes that they are fading out. The entire Black Sun now looks like it is being projected on gauze. On the other side of that gauze, bright lights shine through, overwhelming the image. Then it disappears entirely.
He peels off his goggles and finds himself standing in the parking lot of the U-Stor-It, holding a naked katana.