Chapter 5:0: Nextrunner

The scene in Mr. Grid’s was loud, beer-soaked, and unlike anything I had ever seen. All the runners I knew and many I didn’t were crammed into the bar, shouting at each other over the pounding of music.

Their heads visible above the crowd, Wren and Gloss swayed close together, almost dancing, speaking into each other’s ears. The CheRRy was playing beer pong by herself with other people’s cups, plonking white plastic balls from increasing distances. No one seemed to mind. They just fished out the dirty spheres and flicked them back in her direction.

The consensus seemed to be that we were alive, maybe not untouched, definitely not unharmed. But we were all here, an open secret, and one of the major megacorps continued to suffer a cash crisis and some very pointed questions from institutional shareholders, according to the news scrolling along the small display behind the bar.

As I pushed through the crowd, holding onto Freya’s wrist, heads began to turn. People gawked, they whispered, they turned away. There were those who glared when they saw me and those two did a double-take when they saw Freya. Is that ice walking around? Is that that kid? Thought he got himself flatlined.

But as we worked our way nearer to the center, we came across friendlier faces. Sunya embraced me when she saw me. Ohm shook my hand. Kent gave a long, slow shake of his head like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. They introduced me to some others I’d never met before: Cynosure, this impossibly cool woman with a radio show and animated tattoos. KT Thorn, who wore motorcycle boots and carried a helmet under her arm, and EVE, who wore a very simple, threadbare dress and a scarf that looked familiar. Her eyes reminded me of something frightening, but I couldn’t quite place it.

Finally, we reached the center of the crowd. There, leaning a hip against one of the massive timbers holding up the place, was Enrique, wearing a bright white suit and glittering gloves. He held a glass of whiskey and, for once, needed a shave.

When I emerged before him, he looked up and a wide, warm smile took over his face. He threw his arms wide and I let him wrap me in them. “It’s good to see you, young son,” he said.

“You too. When did you get out?”

“Mere hours ago. My lawyer said he had never seen a judge grant a habeas petition so quickly. Corporate transport arrived within an hour, and I’ve been on the plane from Idaho getting a medical workup for most of the morning. I think you know the physician: Dr. Adler.”

“She does a great job,” I said.

Enrique laid a heavy hand on my shoulder. It was the same gesture as he used to use with me, but it felt different now: like he saw me as a peer. “Thank you,” he said. “I heard that you were the one who found me.”

“I can’t take all the credit. I couldn’t have done it without Gloss and the others. And Freya. This is Freya.”

Enrique turned to her and shook her hand. “It’s nice to meet the person who prompted young Rawls to turn to cybercrime.”

She smiled. “I was about to say the same thing.”

Enrique laughed and gestured to Mr. Grid behind the bar. Some of others passed along two mugs of beer.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Enrique.

He waved me off. “Don’t be. The Kansas run was my idea. None of it was your fault. I pushed us too hard and too fast. Brash and aggressive, that’s my style. But it doesn’t have to be yours.”

“I’m not sure what my style is yet.”

He nodded, as if this were an intelligent thing to say. “So you’re going to continue running.”

“I don’t know.”

“You’d make a hell of a runner.”

“The Prophet Ezra told me I was a hexrunner.”

Enrique stroked his salt-and-pepper stubble. “It makes sense. Momentous things happen around you. You have an influence on information systems that is perhaps difficult to explain or quantify.”

“I want to keep running.”

“Let me make sure you have enough cash to get started,” he said.

“What if I want to keep running with you?”

“I think my influence is not what you need,” he said. “I think you’re ready to seek out a new teacher—or run on your own.”

He gestured to the scoreboard.

HI SCORES

NAME

SCORE

1

Cynosure

1,985,011

2

KT Thorn

1,822,915

3

Rawls

1,783,504

“And I’m not the only one who thinks so,” Enrique said.

Just then I felt myself crushed by Gloss’s massive arms. He lifted me clean into the air before I could get out any words.

“Thanks for running archives, big brother,” I managed to squeeze out.

“I’m the one who should be thanking you,” he said. “If you hadn’t made that wild HQ run they never would have dumped everything in the trash.”

After a round of introductions and after Enrique checked carefully to make sure everybody was holding a beverage, the five of us moved away from the center of the bar to a table in the corner.

“I want to know everything that happened,” Enrique said.

But I protested. “You’re the one who spent months in detention.”

Enrique made a gesture cutting off that line of questioning. It was clear he didn’t want to talk about it.

“Well,” I said, after Gloss dropped me off in Carthage again, “I found Freya, or so I thought.” I explained the rest of my adventures to an audience that gave me their full attention and that grew steadily as I spoke.

One by one, the others came over to listen: the CheRRy, Suny, Ohm, and Kent.

“And did you ever figure out what your ability is?” Gloss said.

“My body manufactures cybernetics when I initiate runs against corporate research servers.”

“Gross,” Freya said.

“But lifesaving,” Enrique said. “I take it you don’t have any control over the process.”

“Not so far,” I said.

“When you run, you don’t know what your status is. The veil of ignorance,” Enrique said mysteriously. But I had heard that phrase before.

“Your namesake,” Gloss added. I was distantly aware that I shared a name with a famous philosopher from the last century. I’d never read his work but I often thought about the title of his best known work: A Theory of Justice.

Justice felt like something I could dedicate my life to.

“And you’ve built your own rig,” Enrique said.

“Yeah, a full suite of breakers and a console.”

“So what’s next for you?”

This seemed to be all anyone ever cared about. I wasn’t concerned with money and I wasn’t political. I wanted to keep running, but for my own reasons. I liked being part of the community. I liked the status I was developing—I’d made it to the top 3. The runners who were consistently at the top, I wanted to know more about them.

And I wanted to prove myself against corps that wouldn’t hold back, with defense systems that weren’t run by my mother.

Just then, a beer-and-a-half in, with the thumping music and the shouting runners, I didn’t think that I could articulate any of this.

What was next for me? I only wanted to enjoy the night. My friend Freya was here with me, and she was safe. The same could be said for my mentor, Enrique. And my new older brother.

Eventually, I had taken so long to answer that the conversation moved on. I didn’t say anything for a while but leaned back and enjoyed watching people I knew talking and playing with each other.

Freya and Sunya seemed to be making friends with each hother. Gloss and Enrique huddled in serious conversation, their forehads practically touching. I drew down my beer. The last bit of neurological trauma seemed to have given me some anosmia, so my nose wasn’t working as well as it should have and I couldn’t quite taste everything I wanted to taste.

Still, I wasn’t complaining.

From time to time that night, runners I didn’t know, those just starting out or those who had been circling the margins for years, approached me and asked about the runs I made last night. I was sure they already knew the outline of what had happened, but they wanted something from me. It was as if my telling would impart something to them, some wisdom or maybe grace or perhaps luck. I felt happy I could deliver.

I liked this. But it made me melancholy. I remembered the last time that we had all been gathered like this. It was the night that Linney told everyone that she was leaving for a job with 7Wonders. I wished she were here. I wanted to talk to her again, even if she were salaried and I was now a career criminal.

Just then a wave of silence passed over everyone in the bar. People looked around and eventually noticed that the eyes of many of the runners were on the doorway and the stairs to the overworld. More and more people turned to see what had occasioned the hush.

Two men and a woman stood in the doorway, wearing the understated suits of corporate professionals. No one in the bar (with the exception of Ohm) was dressed like that. It was clear that they came from another world.

Of course the corps knew where Mr. Grid’s was, and they knew what it was, too. Still, the corps considered us runners to be like a disease: something that it was useful for their competitors be infected with. Perhaps that explained why White Tree paid for my surgery. Perhaps not.

The professionals appeared unarmed, hesitant. They looked like lawyers more than security. Playing a hunch, I stood from the table and quietly began moving through the crowd toward them, tapping other revelers on the shoulder to make my way through.

When I came before them, they seemed to recognize me. Maybe they had augmented eyes, maybe they had a sketch to go on. While I’d scrubbed my DNA from the Registry and my name from anywhere I could find it, we all knew that that I had only given myself some temporary relief.

“Jasper Rawls,” the woman said, and stepped forward to hand me a heavy cream envelope. When I took it, the three lawyers turned around and tramped up the stairs.

I held the envelope tight against my chest under the inquiring stares of other runners as I ignored questions and made my way back to our table. When I got there I saw Enrique sitting straight up and very still, a sheen of sweat on his temples, the same way I had seen him behave when I had first met him.

“They’re gone,” he said.

“If I ever see another FUTUR Design lawyer up close,” Enrique said, sipping his cognac for effect, “no one can blame me for what I do next.”

Gloss put an arm around Enrique’s shoulders and everyone leaned over to watch me open the envelope.

Inside was a card. All it said was:

The offer remains open.

—Mom

A well of feeling opened up in me. I think I made a noise like I was choking because Freya gave me a quick slap on the back.

My mom was out of touch if she thought I would ever come near her workplace again. On the other hand, I could tell she meant well. I’d just stormed the castle, busted through her expensive defensive architecture, and tanked her company’s stock price. And here she was offering me sanctuary if I needed it.

I looked at the card again. The glassy bulb of a single tear stood on the paper but was already starting to lose coherence and soak into the fibers. I slipped the card into the pocket of my jacket without a word.

“That’s it for me, then,” Gloss said, his deep voice bursting the quiet moment. Everyone around looked up at him in confusion or maybe wonderment. Only Enrique seemed to know what was up.

“You going to bed?” the CheRRy said.

“I’m heading back to campus to finish my dissertation,” he said. “Then I’m going on the job market. Every one of us will make our last run at some point, so I’m calling this one mine.”

Then came the welcome roar of Gloss’s friends offering to buy him a beer and congratulating him and teasing him and saying how much they’ll miss him.

Gloss’s eyes and mine met across the table. His approval meant more to me than almost anything else in my life. He made a gesture and then excused himself from the table.

I followed a minute later, and we met outside, the way we did the first night at Mr. Grid’s.

“I’m calling you if I need a rundown on the sickest ice,” I said.

“You’d better. I will always be available to help you, no matter if you’re covered in tags or not.”

“Thanks.”

“And I hope that promise doesn’t haunt me.”

“Oh, it will.”

He laughed, long and deep. But he and I both knew we weren’t joking.

“What about Wren?”

“She’s coming with. She can run her hardware business anywhere, and now that Linney’s gone ... ”

He trailed off. It felt like something was coming to an end.

My phone pinged and I looked at it. Gloss looked over my shoulder shamelessly. I guess he wanted to soak up any other congratulations in the air.

The message was unsigned, but there was only one person it could have come from. It said:

Not bad for a survivor of brain trauma.

“Linney,” Gloss said.

“I hope I can see her again,” I said.

“You can always go corporate.” His voice was suddenly soft.

“Not you, too. Don’t joke about that.”

“It’s not a joke.”

The moment felt uncomfortable, so I hurried back into the bar. Everyone said another round of goodbyes to Gloss and Wren, and when they went up the stairs there was a sense that the party was about to break up.

It occurred to me that I didn’t know where I was going to sleep that night. But I knew that someone would offer me a place to crash.

My phone pinged again, but this time it was a call. Figuring it was a follow up from Linney, I answered without looking at who the call was coming from. What I heard chilled me.

“Jasper,” came Dad’s voice. “It took me forever to find a number for you. Something terrible is happening. They’re strip mining the mountain. It started today. When the rains come, it’s going to destroy the town. I’ve been scared of this for years. No one believes me. I have to leave. I hate to say it, son, but I have to sell the house and leave.”

“Dad, calm down. What exactly happened?”

“I saw strip mining equipment at the top of the mountain today.”

“They strip mine lots of places,” I said. “It’ll be fine.”

“No it won’t. You know what the studies say. If they strip the mountain, our town will be gone. And this storm season is going to be a bad one. I’m just calling to tell you. Don’t plan on coming home because I won’t be here.”

“Dad, let me look around.”

“What?”

“I said, let me look around. Maybe I can figure something out.”

I could picture the mining equipment he was talking about. I’d seen it before, in datastreams pilfered from Restoration Consulting.

The mining equipment all bore the same logo: a stylized woman made from a triangle with a circle on top, and an arc above. An ancient symbol, the sign of Tanit, the symbol of Carthage, the corporate logo of 7Wonders.