Mob Magic, page 28
I've always tried to do the right thing. So I went home and waited for the next packet, and in two weeks I found out that my Micropals hadn't been lying. Elias' case was listed, and all I had to do to find out more was head for the nearest Hood.
I got to the mall, logged in and said hi to Michael, and there was Elias in a postage-stamp-sized video still frame. The superimposed title said this was a Susperp Response. The video began moving jerkily, with clean, crisp audio, and Elias started talking to me.
He said he was sorry for hurting people's feelings with Microzine and hadn't meant to cast any aspersions on the hard-working Microfolx around the country, it had just been a little bit of fun for him and his friends, he hadn't meant to cause any trouble at all. Since nobody had actually been hurt, nothing stolen or vandalized, and since good old Henry had spoken up for him at the post-bust hearing, the judge was giving Elias a chance to enroll in the new One-Strike Program. Either that or jail. So he'd made a deal.
Elias was shutting down Microzine, he'd make a special video to be shown in the citizenship classes at Microskool, and he said that after he'd had a chance to blow off his own steam for a while, he realized that they could have put him under the jail if they'd wanted, and quite easily under the law. But this closeup look at their fairly worthwhile community work, and the officers' even treatment of him, had given Elias a change of heart. He was entering the training program immediately with Henry as his sponsor. Six months of intense instruction in a dormitory with other recruits, a boot camp for the modern age. He'd send me a message every week, and he'd see me again in a few months as a full-fledged Microcop. Elias waved, the image winked out, and Michael's cartoon hand pointed to the disk dispenser, which spit out a disk that would replay Elias's message on our home MKY unit whenever I wanted. Nobody had mentioned dope at all.
I was thrilled. Talk about reintegration into society. The Microcops probably didn't know it, but convincing a hardcase like Elias had to be one of their greatest achievements in their short history. Of course, the threat of a jail term hadn't hurt, either, a prospect that was as terrifying to me as it must have been to Elias. I got back home and ran the file on the disk again and again.
And again and again, I watched Elias' progress during my weekly visits to the Hood. He'd talk to me and show me sample videos of his physical training sessions, target practice, susperp rights classes, advanced instruction in citizenship, hygiene and etiquette that would qualify him to dispense this stuff on the street. He was specializing in communications—perfect for a boy with his background—and said he was looking forward to working on the narrowcast nexus, helping to link and coordinate all the local Microdiz services. Later, I'd run the video on each disk at home a couple of times, too. I had never seen the kid so happy.
You can't stay perfect for long, I guess. Systems that are working fine when they're brand new have a way of naturally testing their restraints and finding the weaker points. Just as Elias was finishing his training, a few chinks began appearing in the Microdiz armor, and the glow of success dimmed by a few watts. We went without trash collection for a whole week once; when a few of the neighbors and I complained, the Microdiz dispatchers told us that the collectors had shown up right on schedule. Then what's this stuff all over the street, we insisted w/:), and it took a special on-site inspection team to establish that we weren't crazy. We found out that we weren't the only ones with vintage garbage problems; there had even been some brownouts in parts of the city, and the newsfeed reports quoted Microdiz spokespersons as saying this was the normal and expected result of dramatic growth in the number of people depending on city services. That might have been the Des Moines party line, but it didn't stop anybody from mumbling that Microdiz had just plain gotten it wrong. It's only human nature; I don't care about your record, what have you done for me lately?
Cobble together a solution and you only cause a mistake somewhere else, like forcing toothpaste out of a blocked tube: It's going to go somewhere, but probably not where you intended. When the Microcops ticketed the whole block the following week for environmental misdemeanors, they used as evidence the videos shot by the on-site inspection team during our sanitation crisis. It took us nearly a month, and some frantic e-mail to Elias, to get them to tear up the tickets.
While those tickets were in force, I wasn't able to use the Hood, as I discovered to my extreme irritation, but during these same few weeks the infrastructure was really creaking. One day, five Microcop cars screeched up to an innocent little bakery on what turned out to be a phony officer-down call. That Saturday, the cable system mistakenly switched signals between the Li'l Microdiz Block and the Home Sex Channel. Every traffic light in the city turned red for ten minutes one afternoon. The Microskool computer system declared an all-day recess. Outbound e-mail replicated itself several hundred times over and kicked itself back to the sender, hopelessly clogging the system. I thought about the endless trouble this was undoubtedly causing for Elias, gamely completing his Microcop training with the bad fortune of drawing communications duty. These incidents were nothing more than confusions, annoyances, embarrassments, and nobody was hurt, thank God, but at least on our street the Microdizzers were almost starting to look like morons.
Elias came through on the environmental misdemeanor debacle, like I said, and we were released from our privilege suspensions. The first thing I did, of course, was head for the Hood.
I logged in like always, and Michael Micro went through his usual wacky bootup dance while the system powered on. But at the end of the sequence, just as the tiny video message window was about to resolve itself, the whole screen went black, and a disk squeezed out of the dispenser. I cursed and tapped keys furiously, but nothing. No power. In fact, as I noticed when I looked up, the whole damn Hood had lost power. Not now, you mangy rat, I thought. Please, not now. Couldn't Microdiz do anything right these days? I tried stuffing the disk back in the machine, but without juice, it wouldn't seat itself. I could hear the wails of children all through the Hood.
I pounded the console and waited. Nothing. After a few minutes, with the kids' cries becoming steadily louder, the lights ratcheted up to half-power, and the amplified voice of a harried and evidently overwhelmed Micrositter announced that the Hood was shutting down temporarily until they could isolate the problem; would we kindly evacuate? Then Michael's cheery voice asked all unescorted kids to report to Michael's Playroom to wait for their parents, and better hurry, 'cuz free Microbux were waiting there for everybody! There was still no response from the console, so I dumped the disk in my bag—at least I'd leave there with something useful—and headed for home, wishing poisoned cheese on Michael all the way.
It took twice as long as usual; every traffic light along the way was blinking amber, making each intersection a de facto four-way stop, and more Microdiz security cars and fire prevention vehicles than I'd ever seen before were also inching their way past the endless bottlenecks, the din of sirens spiking my stress level off the scale. I'd never been so glad to see my driveway.
I guess it was simply force of habit, the unthinking ritual of many weeks of activity, but when I got inside, I just idly powered up our MKY as I usually do, and fed it the blank disk before I realized my mistake.
Not blank.
It was Elias.
He was speaking sharply, rapidly, his eyes narrow with determination, into an MDNet multimedia sensor. This was the end of Microdiz's domination of our daily lives, the moment he'd been training for all these months. Sabotage routines of his own design were jamming commercial communications all over the city and being transmitted online to Microtown control facilities across the country, bicycled from one to the next, even and especially to the Microdiz campus in Des Moines. Along with a group of fellow rebels, he had created a maelstrom of data loss, power outages, traffic bollixes, and false alarms, an electronic Black Plague that would take years to repair. They did this, he said, not to destroy, but to create—the sense of responsibility and self-determination we had given up when we ceded it to Microdiz. Outside, I heard sirens and gunfire.
A disk routine ground into life. The image shimmered into Michael's log-on dance and suddenly we were online. A real-time feed winked in. Now Elias was at his communications station: disheveled, sweating, framed by a wall of blinking warning indicators, screaming over the sound of a klaxon. Thank God I'd made it home. Message all over MDNet. Cellular-triggered explosives. Command stations. Every Microtown. Evacuation warnings. Never let him live after this. Get out now!
Suddenly, Microcops poured in behind him. He turned, then back to me and waved with a sickly small smile. I could see Henry clearly. He stepped toward the screen with a revolver, pointed it at Elias' head, and pulled the trigger. As Elias slumped forward over the console, the screen first went red, then hot-white with the light of a mammoth explosion. I lurched forward as the power failed, the sound and picture died, and Elias was gone forever. I clawed the monitor and screamed for a long time, louder than the sirens outside.
It's been hours now and I'm quiet again. Some people are running hysterically through the street. Nobody knows anything. They're cut off. No power anywhere, no way to communicate. Is it like this in every Microtown? I can smell smoke and ozone. Microcop patrol cars go by now and then, I can hear the amplified voices. But there are just too many terrified people, and nobody's listening.
Just keep them away from me. I know what those vicious bastards did to my boy. I saw it. I saw it all. I've got Elias' pistol and I've got his ammunition. And I swear I'll spread Microcop guts all over this kitchen if they try to come in. I swear to God I'll do it.
With a smile.
* * *
Brian M. Thomsen (ed.), Mob Magic
