Up Against It - M. J. Locke [2]
Two half-hour “Stroiders” blackouts occurred every day, to give Zekies small islands of privacy in their lives. One occurred at two a.m. and the other cycled between three a.m. one day and one a.m. the next. The rest of the time, Zekeston’s citizens were under scrutiny by billions of people they would never meet. Mostly, it was just an annoyance that everyone put up with that resulted in a stipend in everyone’s bank account every month. It was only when you were trying to be sneaky that it mattered when and where the “Stroiders” shadows were.
The main way “Stroiders” got their Zekeston data feed was from the stationary cams and the rovers, but when something important happened, “Stroiders” motes typically showed up, a hazy glamour emitted from jets in the assembler dispersal piping. You couldn’t hide from motes. So next Kam did a science fair project: mote density versus “Stroiders” audiovisual resolution.
He sampled motes around the city and compared them to what people saw, Downside. (Phocaeans could not experience “Stroiders” the way Downsiders back on Earth did—as a fully realized, 3D virtual world—but they could sample it in video in small snatches, by submitting a request to the library and waiting a month.) The lowest mote concentrations in the university plaza typically occurred between four-thirty and eight a.m. on Tuesdays. This pinned down the time and place for the event. (He also got an A+ on the project, and second place in the senior-level information systems category.)
It was sheer serendipity that the best time to stage the event turned out to be the morning after high school graduation. The project became their secret graduation present to one another.
Over the past week and a half, they’d been spiking the fountain with bug juice. They had agonized over how to get the bug juice into the fountain without alerting everyone—“Stroider”-cams might black out periodically, but the plaza’s security cameras didn’t. And there were security guards and scary sorts prowling the nearby Badlands. Geoff and the others had no way of knowing when the plaza was being watched. So during one of the nighttime blackout periods, Ian had climbed down into the maintenance tunnels from an out-of-the-way entry port, made his way to beneath the plaza, inserted tubing into the water line for the fountain, and piped the juice in. If the university students or staff had noticed that the fountain was leaking, no one said anything about the leak, nor about any strange smells emanating from the pool. When the dribble stopped, Ian went back into the maintenance tunnel and removed the tap.
Geoff’s final task was the riskiest. They had a plan to avoid the camera, but there would be people in the plaza even at that hour. So Amaya had volunteered to be a distraction. She wasn’t into the whole clothes, tattoos, and makeup thing, and Geoff was dubious about whether it was a good idea. But when she had shown up in Downsider drag this morning, Geoff and the others had barely recognized her. (“Say one word,” she’d warned them fiercely, “and I will pound you.”)
Geoff’s biggest worry was that her path was longer than his, and she might not exit the plaza before the “Stroider”-cams went live. The cops would be all over those “Stroider” broadcasts to see who might have done it, and Geoff didn’t want their attention directed to Amaya. If anyone would take the heat for this, it should be him.
Geoff radioed Kam. “Well?”
Kam checked his own wavespace display. “Yep. Just.” They were careful not to say too much, in case their broadcasts were being monitored.
She wouldn’t show up on the monitors. She’d gotten out clean. Geoff let out the breath he’d been holding, and drew another one in. He leaned on the