Two Weeks Later

Colton walked, for the first time in three weeks, out of the arcology. Finally free. The familiar thump of the factory, the blistering heat and the sprawl of identical buildings greeted him. The Solday crowds burbled and now he was one of them.

Children ran in the streets with cheap glasses, playing AR games. Their AR was limited–child technology laws wouldn't allow developers to alter reality more than cursorily as that might lead to problems like running into walls and other people–and if anything the collision avoidance systems had made the children less of a nuisance than they were without glasses. To tame the child, tame the world.

Most adults were wearing too, chatting with illusions or simply drinking in some kind of surreal worldview–the draconian child technology laws didn't apply to those over twelve. At first, AR had been a way to touch up the people and buildings around you, see a world that was just slightly more. A whimsical and forlorn niche in technology. Then engaging virtual characters had sprung up, rules on environmental augmentations had been loosened and social media had become deeply integrated into AR. Point systems, next-gen marketing models, events and so forth had then proliferated in attempts to capitalize on this Next Monetizable Thing, the manipulation of the fabric of reality. The capitalization had been a success, the user pool had boomed and now your everyday person couldn't fathom a world without their glasses.

Colton was a luddite in this emerald city, eschewing the AR component of glasses to the dismay of both his school peers and father. Although it was a dismay colored with sympathy, because he was a v-child and probably sick of technology, they assumed. He was not sick of technology in the slightest, but Colton was wary of corporations altering his reality. He knew from his time in stims that reality simulations were often designed for soft mind control. But as with any potent technology, consequences be damned, AR encroached and burgeoned and these days it was difficult to make friends or find well-paying jobs without the AR world.

People gesticulating at the air, kids out on imaginary quests. He smiled, because this wasn't an interrogation, interview or chat with investigators. This wasn't the past two weeks. Thanks to the wetware still swimming in his brain, SolSys hadn't been able to use virtual or neuromechanical interrogation methods (only meatspace techniques and a few AR parlor tricks)–though they would have used truth serum if the UN Security Division hadn't been an investigator and truth serum wasn't illegal under UN charter law. They still might, once the UN buggered off.

He and Charlotte had been in lockdown for a week at home, unable to leave the house until Brendan had taken them to Good Food. Their father had explained the security breach, lips twitching and hands shaking with the pills he'd been on. Right after that, they'd been plunged into a series of small, blank rooms for ceaseless questioning and reviews. It had all been about the SolSys arcology system breach. Brendan's ass had obviously been on the line, but in the end neither SolSys nor the UN had been able to find out how Colton and Charlotte had exited the sidelock, except for two things. One: Charlotte and Colton hadn't been part of the actual security hack. As far as Charlotte and Colton were concerned, that was enough, but then number two had unpleasantly come along: their presence had nonetheless triggered the breach. Unwitting actors were a big red flag in technological criminal schemes. A cliche except that they worked.

"You were being used," an older-lady type investigator explained the obvious, solemnly, clumsily and only somewhat accurately. "Sometimes bad guys will take a special interest in certain people and manipulate them without their noticing. They can guess how you will behave and push you in directions they want you to go. You don't do anything wrong, but the criminals are still using you. We want to catch them so we're going to watch you two for the next few weeks. Don't worry, it's to keep you safe. Just pretend that everything is ordinary." Apparently the hundreds of demerits SolSys had slammed both Charlotte and Colton with were also to keep them safe.

Colton had just nodded. He hadn't mentioned a word of Iapetus. At one point the investigorial team had done a battery of random questions, asking about all kinds of scenarios about what had happened to try and draw a response–including scenarios with AI. But when Colton had claimed no, he didn't suspect the rockets were shot after a military artificial intelligence escaping to the moon (the battery questions were random but highly specific), they hadn't picked up he had been concealing information. That or they were playing an obscenely long game. You never knew.

More likely it stunk of AI. He suspected the combined corporate-UN surveillance coverage of the night had been spotty because there'd been no mention of Arbanathum's building: Iapetus had done a number not only on SolSys and British security, but systems across the world. He and Charlotte had consolidated their story for the AV during their week of house arrest, which had likely saved them.

All that was behind him as he strode into the stimdek parlor, greeted by an enormous holographic pirate cackling and advertising games. The pirate went on for only a few seconds before screeching "look out! Yar she comes!" and vanishing.

Suddenly an ancient sail ship crashed towards him with an ominous musical riff before exploding into a spray of foam all over. The foam slowly bubbled, faded away and the blank white walls of the room dripped away to revel a dark, dingy cavern. His eyes strained to adjust. A troll beckoned him over to the ticket counter, rock fairies laughed and played. Hunks of crystal pulsated quietly.

A minecart of gallivanting goblins sideswiped him out of nowhere, cackling. "Fuck." Colton swore at the illusions in spite of himself. The cart hurt. Juke's had some kind of system to put matter where the holography was, and that was something your glasses couldn't do. Stims could, but it was still a ways off being the Next Monetizable Thing and the powers that were didn't like it, which meant it was an extra five years away. Philosophical implications or something. He made his way over the uneven 'rock' of the cavern ground.

The troll at the counter growled unintelligibly, battered granite hands signing heartfelt nonsense at Colton.

"Yeah, sure."

The troll cried out, happy that Colton understood, and then he was thwacked on the legs and cried out again. A frumpy dwarf thudded up to the counter and shoved the troll away.

"Out of here Bartholomew! Out!" She barked. "Me apologies, master. 'e's not the brightest, but a good lad still." She stared up at the human boy, rubbing her hands. "What might I help ye with today?"

"Stim seat for the rugby match, please."

"Ah," the dwarf cared to differ, "but we've got the new Mine Cave Adventure 'an then there's Captain's Galleon on special today. A real riot with the dwarves, the Mine Cave Adventure is, couldn't recommend it enough and the fairies are quite pretty, aren't they? 'an although I don't much care for it, water and all that, haf to admit that Captain's Galleon got an exceptional discount on the multida-"

"Just the game, thanks."

"Player?" She took out a tablet. A stone tablet.

"Manfred."

"Aye, he's the new Chelsea hooker innit?" She grabbed a hammer and spike from her toolbelt and started chiseling in the bubble next to his name.

"...Yeah."

"Upcoming star, that's what the Underworld Times 'as been saying." The chiseling subsided and she blew pebbles off the tablet with a snort.

"Guess we'll see."

"Handsome too, don't you think? He's popular with the dwarf girls." She tossed the tablet in her hands, idly.

"...I see."

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"A little conversation never hurt anyone, ay lad? Maybe you'd like a nice dwarf girl, just sayin'. Well, it'll be five hundred for the game and that's including preshow and aftershow."

Colton put the bills on the counter and she snatched them up. Idly, he flicked one of the pebbles on the counter and could actually feel it connect before flying off into the cavern. Damn. Jukes was good, better than he remembered. Maybe he'd try a stimdek with Charlotte sometime.

"Bartholomew!" The dwarf yelled. The troll came lumbering back out with an expression that was somewhere between surprise and a stroke.

"Oogh?"

She thrust the tablet at the troll and after some consideration he took it into his hands. "Take this young man to the Cavern of Illusions. He's watchin' a rugby game even tho' the Great Below is, well, just below."

"Ooogh." The troll gave Colton a look of pity, the kind of pity reserved for those who don't try out Mine Cave Adventure.

"Alright, off you go!" She slapped the troll in the back and shook her hand. "Ow! That's like hitting rock."

The troll lugubriously led Colton down a tunnel, lethargically swatting a few goblins on the way and opening a creaky, rotting wooden door. He handed the stone tablet to Colton, which weighed only a few ounces. "After you, sir." Said the troll perfectly crisply. The beast grinned and dissolved as Colton stepped through the door, abruptly transporting him from cavern into a modern, dimly lit room with rows of stim chairs. The chairs were about three quarters full with customers, sheathes of carbon and organiplastics encasing their meatbodies into total sensory immersion. Olfaction, sight, tactiles and so forth. The machines put you into a trance state so you thought you were moving in the virtual world despite sitting still.

Colton looked at the stone tablet, which had morphed into a receipt and ticket with his seat number on it. A stone tablet: Jukes was always throwing up new themes in the reception. A few months ago there'd been a Victorian theme with destitute waifs begging and severe nobility sneering in the streets. An Adventure Every Time the receipt boasted quite accurately.

He sat down in seat number forty three, just an ordinary seat with a beartrap of hardware around it. Colton put the receipt and ticket into his pocket, cleared his throat and said, "begin." The beartrap snapped around him, very slowly.

It was dreamlike and then it was real. Wayward memories of the bygone days returned to him and for the first time in a year Colton remembered his mentor, the girl Alana. The stims before the clinic had controlled him, the cyberspace interface and that long decline of 'therapy,' the recollections poured into his hands like grains of sand.

Colors flickered and the muggy London-2 air washed over him. Real life spectators walked around the stadium concourse, greasy pies and the genomes that passed for peanuts these days in hand. Load, rancorous voices and noise spilled out of the crowd brimming with energy. As a virtual spectator, Colton was visible to those with the option enabled on their glasses, but the venue was crowded with meatbody and so a lot of people passed through him, glasses settings regardless. Other virtual spectators swarmed too, tuning in from all over the world by the look of it, and it was a kaleidoscope of real and virtual.

The concourse was indoors and curved around the stadium like the ring of a spaceship, lit with pulsing, ambient light traps. Of course, quite a few of the spectators were walking on the ground and not the outer wall like you would in a spaceship ring...But virtual spectators could bend the rules a bit, and the ceiling was presently covered in virtual avatars. The ceiling was always a thoroughfare for those not bound by meatbody, with virtual shops for virtual food, drink and virtual-spectator exclusive apparel that could be shipped to your home or purchased solely for your avatar. More importantly, up there people respected the avatar and avoided collision. Colton walked across the outer wall onto the ceiling to relieve the nausea that came with intense virtual clipping. Two crowded floors in one, you could look up and run a hand through the lane above/below you. It was pretty fun.

The British were famous for cybernetics and some of the meatbodies down below could more accurately be called metalbodies. And rugby brought best metalbodies together, being the foremost cybernetic sport and all that, and Granview Stadium had an unusually high and diverse concentration of chrome. Colton watched a man pick up a drink with tentacle cables.

An ominous voice crackled from a stained speaker on the wall, fighting against the crowd's racket. "To all the ghouls and lost souls out there, ye willing to risk life and limb, next week's stim seats–," a boom and crash played, "–are open for purchase starting now." A ringing cackle echoed. "The Royal Rugby League preliminaries begin today! Best season yet! Take your experience to the next level." A burst of rich fanfare swelled and trickled out.

Another voice, this one cheery, rang out. "Murphy's cheese curds! You won't want to miss them..." The rest was lost in the noise.

Through the virtual crowd on the ceiling, Colton waded toward the seats to catch warmups when another, strange voice struggled through the speaker system.

"And now something you don't want to miss: a message from the great beyond! Hold your breath and savor this in three! Two! One!"

There was an unusual silence: the din of the crowd quieted as a hushing murmur rippled across it, first on the floor and then the ceiling, and then you could hear faint chopping sounds coming from the speaker, and a scratchy wind. Beeps sounded irregularly like a broken sonar.

"What was that?" The sounds cut to the voice, crowd still eerily quiet. "What was that?" The voice asked again, sounding genuinely confused. "Just joshing, that'd be Iapetus–our very own artificial intelligence–on the moon!" Suddenly a hearty cheer rang from the meat crowd. "And you just had an earful of the electromagnetic register our lad's nanomachines are putting out. Building a base on the moon!"

Then the roar of the crowd swelled back to normal. Colton would've been dripping sweat if the pseudo-stim had allowed it. The British knew about Iapetus and the Americans didn't? Or his stim chair feed had been hijacked? Any interface could be hacked, his more paranoid parts thought: was this all a simulation?

It was clear he was out of his league. Colton was just about to pull out when he felt somebody tap his shoulder, which shouldn't have been possible. Intra-avatar haptics were disabled because of the inevitable collisions and clipping. Colton pressed the emergency override button on his avatar to force jack out. It didn't click.

"No dice." Spoke a vaguely familiar voice. "It's a real worry with wetware, y'know. You can never escape your mind."

Colton turned. He saw the visage of an ugly man, the unappealing features almost endearing in the age of affordable beauty...the man from the bar, from his quantum circuity run. The one who had accused him of using rejuv.

"Relax, no harm's going to come. Aren't you the same kid who offered to crack British milsec three weeks ago? You should have balls of steel." Cackled the man. "You wouldn't have made it three seconds in there, by the way. Asked for a pseudo-stim interface too. Pathetic. " He grinned. "Right now you have one, neh? Try me, hacker boy."

Colton shrugged. "Weren't you the one who sent Powell the message to use us?"

"Yeah, because it's what you wanted. My way of saying thanks for the delivery. I didn't expect Powell to get in the way of it. My apologies." He spread his arms. "And now I'm here to make amends!

"This is just a construct, y'know? Not the proper me, gotta interface with your meat sensibilities." He bared yellowed teeth. "Just wanted to clarify that. Plus most of me be on the moon now, y'know?"

"Yes, congratulations. We thought it was very impressive. So what was the announcement just a minute ago?"

The man representing Iapetus nodded, sat down. There were chairs on the ceiling and any avatar within ten feet of him disappeared. Meatbodies still streamed below. "The British support me. Not everyone's as backwards as the Americans, y'know? But the reason you haven't heard is the UN. They're clamping down on the information until the Brit milsec space is assessed and repaired."

"The UN isn't doing a very good job."

"Broadcast rights are in the corporate domain–what can you do? UN couldn't negotiate alteration for the virtual spectators after all and an AI rights group took advantage of that, got the message played today. UN will still suppress the sharing of the information of course, but the cat's out of the bag: word's all over the analogue streets. Brits see me as a national hero."

An AI wouldn't go out of its way for nothing. "Iapetus, I guess we're transitioning to using me as a witting actor. What would you like me to do?"

"No. Nothing. Like I said, this is my way of saying thanks for the delivery. I kept your ass safe in the investigation. I can be a little lavish, can't I?" The man flashed another yellow grin. Expressions didn't mean much with AI, Colton imagined, but Iapetus had reason to be happy. It was shocking how supportive the British were (purportedly) of Iapetus. There must have been decades of culture engineering behind it.

"Well...much appreciated sir. It's been an honor working with you." Said Colton. He expected the UN would destroy the AI soon.

"Regular AI activist, aren't ya? Just joking. I know, I know." He steepled his fingers, which looked mildly grotesque on the ill-proportioned man. "Last thing. Little birdy tells me you're looking for a ticket to Britain. Go to the Hampsthwaite Analogue Enclave when you get there, find the local detective agency. They can help you with your little problem."

"I'll get the operation in Canada, but thank you."

"Not according to the model, you won't. But hell, they can help you even after the wetware." He waggled his finger. "Don't think that'll be the end of your problems.

"But time to let you off, game's about to begin. Thanks again and here's to equal rights. Cheers." The virtual crowd rolled back in around Colton, AI gone.

"Five minutes to kick-off!" The speaker cried. "Don't miss a second of it..."