Up Against It - M. J. Locke [57]
“Thank you, Commissioner.”
“You’re welcome.” With his arm over her shoulder they headed around the corner past the cordon, to a paramedic station. She asked, “What started it?”
“Group of folks come running along the walk yelling that life support was infected,” he said. “Damnedest thing I ever did hear.”
“What?”
“You heard right. Diseased. Everything about to be eaten up and destroyed. Grab what you need, they said, get out while you can. Some kind of nano-mutation or computerized virus breaking out into meatspace.”
“That’s nonsense. There are way too many fail-safes.”
He shrugged. “Some people just like to make trouble. These six kids, they’re loitering around, I’d just told them they had to leave. They hear the hollering and see the looters breaking things, and they start knocking stuff off my shelves. Just to be mean, I guess.
“I try and stop ’em, someone pushes me over and I clob me head.” He touched a swollen area on his forehead with a wince. “I come to, me place is being trashed, those young troublemakers see me try and get up and come at me with big sticks just for the shear joy of bashin’ on an old man.” Anger flashed in his eyes. “I took the leader out with a stool, made a break for it, outrun the little bastards, and jumped over the railing.”
She smiled. “I saw. Impressive leap. It’ll make the evening news.”
He smiled back, ruefully. “Still got me Downsider reflexes, I guess.”
“I’ll say.”
“They destroyed my inventory, what the looters didn’t steal.” He said it without expression, but it still hit Jane like a rock in the face. “Don’t know what I’m going to do.”
She turned him over to the medics, wishing him luck, feeling helpless and angry. By the time she got back over to where the mayor and police chief were directing the riot control efforts, the uprising was over: the police were bringing out rioters cuffed to prison sticks. The leaders seemed to be a small group of young teens. They jeered and taunted the adults standing there, as the police steered them along toward the elevators.
“What caused the riot?” she asked Jimmy Morris.
It was Jerry Fitzpatrick who replied. “No idea yet.” The chief of police towered over her and the mayor, and spoke in a monotone. “Rumors of impending doom. That’s all we know.”
“The old shopkeeper told me they were telling everyone that our life-support systems are carrying an infection,” she said.
“You’d know better than us,” Morris replied.
“Both the assembly and life-support systems are fine. The city’s manufactories, too. So who knows? The only thing going on with life support right now,” Jane replied, “are some simulations my folks are doing to identify the root cause of the lock failures.”
“The press want a word,” one of JimmyM’s staffers said.
“Let them come on over,” Jimmy replied. Within moments they were surrounded. Dutifully, sweating under the lights and thick spy-mote glamour, Jane gave them a few words. She promised a more lengthy news conference soon.
“Let me just say, though,” she said, “the cluster is in no immediate danger. The rumors that triggered this riot are just plain wrong. I won’t kid anyone that we have serious resource problems. But we have options. The prime minister’s team is pursuing every angle and we expect to have results soon.”
Jimmy made nice to her for the cameras. At least he had not turned on her publicly yet. Perhaps the eyes-on thing had meant something to him after all.
10
The feral received a message from an unknown entity. The message contained eight algorithms from the feral’s core code. It said:
Info: [algorithms] = you. Info: I = MeatManHarper, that’s all.
A message to me? the feral thought. And, MeatManHarper?
The feral understood labels. All entities in the system had labels. But they followed set naming conventions, and try as it might, the feral could not trace the origins of