24 – Show and Tell
The neighborhood around the NGT building was busy—the busiest in district seventeen. Skyscrapers abounded, but they all looked small in the shadow of the truncated megatower. On the ground level, the tower didn’t even look broken unless you stood a block away and craned your neck upward, past the enormous overhanging park level near the break. Then, you could see the giant, building-sized girders sticking up, twisted by the collapse of the tower’s top half.
Addie had seen it plenty of times, but she always felt a little bit of awe as she approached the tower, and it steadily grew in her perspective. It was hard to believe that there were dozens of megastructures as big or bigger than it in New Manhattan. She wondered how many Tony had visited for one job or another. Thinking about Tony brought a fresh twist of guilt in her stomach; it wasn’t that she felt like she’d done anything wrong as far as he was concerned. It was more the idea that she was sort of sneaking off to dinner in a place she’d said was too dangerous to visit at night.
“Is it, though?” she muttered, turning onto NGT Avenue, still named for the defunct tech company that had spent hundreds of billions on the broken tower. There were thousands of people out and about in the area, and, sure, as the night grew late, there might be some shootings and robberies, but the odds that anything would happen to her were slim, especially if she took a cab home. Besides, Addie was just a little tired of her father’s overprotective nature. “For real, though!” she said, shaking her head in amused dismay. He'd hired a total stranger to live in his shop as an excuse to have another set of eyes on her!
“Addie,” JJ said, his tinny, robotic voice hesitant, “you aren’t speaking to me, are you?”
“No, JJ.” Addie flicked her gaze to her chat window with Zane and expanded it. Mentally, she typed: Near the tower. What restaurant?
She continued walking, and less than a minute later, his reply popped up:
Zane K: ¿A Dónde Vas? That’s not a question; it’s the name of the restaurant. It’s less than a block from the NGT building.
Addie groaned. She’d heard of the place and was pretty sure she was under-dressed. She self-consciously smoothed her sweater as she walked and looked down at herself. It was her shoes, mainly. Her canvas sneakers were not exactly new or clean-looking. She resolved not to worry about it. He’d invited her. He should have warned her if he picked a place with a dress code.
She had JJ update her map, saw she was only three minutes away, and slowed her strides, suddenly feeling nervous. A cold trickle of sweat ran down her ribs on the right side, and she groaned. Why was she so nervous? Zane was just a nice guy she’d met, someone with a lot in common with her, apparently, and who might be able to give her some advice. This wasn’t a date! Nodding to confirm her inner dialogue, Addie moved through the crowds, trying not to be overwhelmed by the constant spam of advertisements attempting to intrude on her AUI.
JJ wasn’t terrible at filtering the spam, but he let things through here and there. The sex workers were the hardest for him to recognize for some reason. She supposed it was probably just a combination of high volume and the fact that they tended to disguise their ads as personal messages. Addie was almost glad that her optics couldn’t produce flicker-free overlays, so it was easy enough to recognize the semi-transparent, shimmering, sometimes glowing men and women leaning close to whisper their promises of sweet release. She just waved them away before they flicked an address ping at her.
When she reached her destination building, she stepped into the lobby and was relieved to see a broad spectrum of clientele inside. She followed the signs past the elevator bank, down a few hallways decked in faux marble and hardwoods, and came to the restaurant's reception desk. Another wave of relief washed over her when she saw Zane standing near a bench for waiting diners, dressed almost as casually as she was—nice, tapered black slacks and polished shoes, but a close-fitting gray T-shirt with a V-neck on his top half.
He looked up at her approach and smiled brightly, his straight white teeth drawing Addie’s attention away from his stylishly wavy sandy-brown hair. “Hey! So glad you came,” he said as if her messages might have been a string of lies. As Addie came to stand beside him, he leaned down for a perfunctory hug, pressing his cheek against her ear. “You look nice.”
“Oh, um,” Addie smoothed her sweater as she stepped away from him, still trying to categorize her feelings about his powerful cologne, “thanks.” She was so relieved to see his casual attire that she almost forgot to respond. After a few awkward—to her—seconds, she stammered, “You clean up well, Zane.”
“Hey, thanks.” He shrugged and reached up to fiddle with an earring Addie hadn’t noticed before. He turned the silvery, round ball as he continued speaking, “Our table should be ready in just a minute. The synth said twelve minutes when I arrived, and it’s been at least ten.”
“Synth?” Addie looked at the hostess just a few feet away, frowning. She seemed perfectly human—wavy black hair, big, lifelike brown eyes, and mannerisms that spoke of a lifetime of forming habits. Addie tilted her head slightly, narrowing her eyes as she activated the spectral overlay in her optics.
Her cybernetic retinas weren’t the highest quality, so she was immediately beset by static and flickering artifacts. Even so, as the world dimmed, colors muting into shades of gray and blue as her optics filtered out the visible spectrum and shifted to ultraviolet detection, Addie’s eyes widened with surprise as she focused on the girl’s face.
There it was—a faint, glowing emblem etched into her temple, previously invisible but now stark and undeniable. The mark resembled interwoven lines, like a delicate circuit board or a lattice of vines, glowing softly in the ultraviolet spectrum. It pulsed faintly, almost alive, with a subtle rhythm that matched the movements of the synthetic’s body. It was a mark required by corporate consortium law, but Addie had only ever read about them; the synths in her neighborhood looked like synths.
With a flick of her focus, Addie disengaged the spectral overlay. The world snapped back into vivid color, and the mark disappeared, leaving behind nothing but the unsettlingly perfect human façade. Zane, watching her intently, nodded. “Pretty uncanny, huh?”
“Never seen one so perfect.”
“If you didn’t live in the Blast, you’d see ’em all the time.”
“I mean, we’re basically at ground zero here.”
“Yeah, but there’s still a lot of the old corpo money in this neighborhood. Still a bunch of businesses headquartered out of the NGT building.” He gestured to himself. “Boxer, for instance.”
“Right.” Addie stuffed her hands into the pockets of her jeans and shrugged.
“Zane?” the synth said, projecting her voice to be heard over the restaurant's noise behind her. Addie had a momentary panic, afraid they’d been overheard, but the hostess’s following words put her at ease, “Your table’s ready. Please follow me.”
Zane smiled and motioned for Addie to precede him, so she followed after the synth, unable to stop staring, watching her hips sway, her calves flex, and her hair bounce around her shoulders. She was so real! The synth so entranced Addie that she hardly noticed the restaurant. Her vague impression was that it was busy and relatively upscale but nothing intimidating. The hostess delivered them to a horseshoe-shaped corner booth, and when they sat down, the noise in the restaurant immediately fell away like a heavy curtain had been drawn.
Zane smiled at her reaction. “Noise shielding. I wouldn’t consider a restaurant without it, not with what we’ve got to discuss.”
Addie turned to watch the synthetic hostess make her way back across the restaurant, then looked at Zane. “Oh yeah? What do we have to discuss that’s so sensitive?”
He shrugged, scooting around the booth so he was closer to her. “Well, nothing, I guess. I just got the impression you were a little leery about talking about your…talents.”
Addie smiled, shaking her head, a little embarrassed. “I wasn’t trying to be snarky. I’m not used to, um, nice places and…” She trailed off lamely.
“No worries.” He’d put himself at the back of the booth while Addie still sat on the left side. It wasn’t exactly intimate, but he was a lot closer than if he’d sat across from her. Of course, Addie’s mind began to spin about what that meant. Was this a date? Was he interested in her like that, or was he just being friendly? The only thing she could think was that there was no way—no way a guy so damn handsome would want a thing to do with an average-looking girl from the Blast.
Feeling awkward and trying to get her mind to stop spinning, she gestured to the dining room. “I’ve heard of this place—supposed to be good.”
“It is! Do you like tacos? They do a deconstructed street taco thing with five different house-made salsas. Well… I mean, they’re just tacos, but I love spicy food, and I always get it. They have all kinds of stuff, though. Check out the menu; I’m not trying to sell anything.” He laughed, and Addie realized he sounded nervous, which brought a smile to her lips and banished some of the nerves gnawing at her gut.
“Well—” She called up the menu on her AUI. “—I like tacos just fine, but I ate a bunch of them on Boxer Day. I might branch out a little.”
“Sure. Of course.” He nodded rapidly, then his eyes glazed over as he, too, read through the menu. “Can I order us a pitcher of margaritas?”
“Woah, buddy. You trying to get me scrambled?” Addie laughed to soften the words. “I mean, you can get a pitcher, but I won’t have more than one or two drinks’ worth.”
“Fine with me!”
Addie scanned through the menu, pausing on the entrée section and trying not to let the shock show on her face when she saw the prices—ninety bits for “pollo en Pipián,” for instance. JJ told her the dish was just a cut of chicken served with a sauce made from pumpkin seeds, chiles, and tomatillos. It sounded good, but Addie let her eyes drift back to the appetizers and salads. She didn’t want to spend so much on a single meal.
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Maybe she hadn’t been as good at masking her thoughts as she’d thought, or maybe the menu reminded Zane of his intentions—whatever the case, he said, “Hey, by the way, since we’re going to talk about Dust and the possibility of you speaking to a Boxer recruiter, I’m going to charge this as a business expense. Don’t worry about the prices.”
“Oh! Is that what this is all about? I thought you were just looking to kill some time on your day off.”
Zane chuckled and picked up his glass of water—when had someone dropped off water?—taking a sip. “Look, I won’t lie to you. I thought you were…interesting, and I wanted to hang out a little bit more. I figure I might help you out and earn some points with the company while I’m at it, though. I really think what Boxer has to offer people like you—like us—is worth taking a look at.”
Addie had figured as much, so she didn’t press the issue. With a little relief and a hint of malicious pleasure, she selected the chicken dish and an appetizer—chorizo-stuffed dates. She wasn’t sure she’d like the flavors together, but she liked the chorizo and eggs she often ordered from Manuel’s, and she was pretty sure dates were a kind of dried fruit. “I ordered the chicken dish—the, um, pollo en Pipián—and some chorizo-stuffed dates.”
“Oh?” Zane smiled and nodded. “You like chicken? It’s real, you know.”
Addie’s eyes widened, and her cheeks began to heat up. “What?”
“Yeah, not vat-grown protein, but real cuts with the bone and all. The restaurant gets it flown in from up north.”
Addie gulped, reaching for her water and leaning back in the booth, the ice cubes clinking against the sides of her glass. Suddenly, the price tag made a lot more sense. “Do you think I should change my order—”
“Hell—” Zane shrugged. “—I wouldn’t. You gotta try everything once or twice, right?”
“Do—do they suffer?”
Zane’s smile widened, exposing a chrome-plated tooth behind his right canine. “The chickens? Nah! If you read the ‘about’ section on the menu, they talk about the ‘free-range’ farms and the humane treatment. This isn’t the kind of chicken you’d find in the big factories back in the day before vats got popular.”
“Well, that’s good, I guess.” Addie felt a little queasy at the thought, but some—usually quiet—voice in the corner of her mind was saying to go for it. She wanted to see what it was like, how meat such as Seymour Hersh might have eaten would look and taste. While she was sipping her water, another synth arrived, this one a good deal more obvious with gray, plastic-like flesh, and deposited a pitcher of yellow, icy liquid on the table along with two salt-rimmed glasses.
Zane poured them each a margarita and asked, “Have you thought about it much? The whole Dust thing?”
Addie was frantically having JJ look up how to drink from a glass coated in salt but managed to reply, “Yeah, for sure. It’s all I’ve been thinking about, really.” She was lying, of course, considering what she and Tony had gotten up to that day, but she didn’t want to get into that.
JJ spoke softly into her ear, “Just drink it like normal, and the margarita will pick up the salt flavor.” Addie didn’t need the help; Zane was leading by example, downing a huge gulp of his drink. She took a sip, her eyes shooting wide as the tangy, sweet, salty flavors exploded on her tastebuds.
“Oh, that’s good.” She licked the salt flakes off her lips and couldn’t help chasing her words with a giggle.
“Told you!” He set his glass down and idly spun it while he asked, “So? What are you thinking? Don’t you want to learn more about what you can do?”
“Yeah, sure, but that doesn’t mean I want to sell my soul to Boxer.” Heat rushed to Addie’s cheeks again, and she lifted a hand to her mouth, hiding behind it. “Oh! I didn’t mean that—I’m too used to talking trash about corpos. I’m sorry, Zane!”
He waved her apology off. “Nah, I get it. I had lots of friends like that when I was younger. Corpos have bad raps for a reason, you know? Thing is, when you have real talent, something that can’t be installed with a chip, you get some bargaining power when it comes to contracts.”
“Is that the case with you?”
“Yep. I’ve got a deal that lets me work for the big bad corpo without feeling too guilty.” He shrugged. “You could do that too. Sparks are in high demand.”
“You’re so sure I’m a spark?”
Zane grinned as he leaned back to reach into his pants pocket. He pulled out a small silvery disc that looked almost like a drink coaster. He held it up and twisted it left and right so it caught the light on its iridescent surface. “How about we find out?”
“What?” Addie narrowed her eyes at the object, querying JJ to identify it. His little search animation kept spinning, though, as Zane explained.
“This is something that can evaluate the strength of your ability to manipulate Dust. I emphasize that word because there are other ways to evaluate people like us, but that’s the primary, or maybe most easily evaluated one.”
“How does it work?” Addie didn’t bother trying to hide how intrigued she was.
“I’ll show you, but—” He cut himself off as another synth arrived with the appetizer Addie had ordered. Its polished, seamless white hands held the tray with the kind of care you’d expect from a seasoned server. Each step it took was measured and silent. As it deposited the tray on the table, Addie’s mouth began to water. The golden-brown dates glistened under the soft lighting, a faint wisp of smoky, savory aroma curled up from the tray, the chorizo inside giving off a rich, spicy scent that mingled with the caramelized sweetness of the dates.
The synth didn’t smile or speak; it turned with elegant precision and noiselessly walked away. As it turned, Addie watched its face, looking for a hint of thought or emotion behind its glassy blue eyes, but nothing was there. She wasn’t sure why she was fixating on the synths; she supposed it had to do with the lifelike hostess; some part of her was wondering if any of the others working in the restaurant were special.
“Go ahead,” Zane said, nodding to the appetizers.
Addie nodded and put one on her little plate. It was warm but not hot, so she lifted it to her lips but froze before biting it. “Is this real pork?”
Zane tilted his head and clicked his tongue, throwing her a half smile. “Well, real vat-grown pork. No little pigs were involved.”
“Okay,” she said, biting it in half. It was delicious, the meld of flavors reminding her of Mexican candy—savory, sweet, and a little spicy. She stuffed the second half into her mouth before swallowing, enjoying the mouth feel. “God, that’s good!” She giggled, holding the back of her hand in front of her mouth. She noticed Zane hadn’t moved and pointed to the tray, “Come on! Eat one!”
“Oh, sure.” He snatched up one of the dates and bit it in half. “Mmph! You weren’t joking.”
Addie chewed and swallowed, then took a drink of her margarita, noting a distinct tingly euphoria that told her the alcohol in the beverage had not been skimped on. Zane swallowed his bite, then set the disc between them on the table, scooting a little closer to her. “Ready?”
“I don’t know what to—”
“I mean, ready to watch me?” When Addie nodded, he reached into his other pocket and took out a tiny, silver, screw-top container, just a bit smaller than one of Addie’s lip gloss containers. He unscrewed the top, and she caught her breath. The inside teemed with brilliant, rainbow-hued particles of Dust that seemed to roil and pulse around each other. “This is refined Dust. It has a Luminal Index rating of four point eight.”
“Oh my God!” Addie breathed, leaning close. It was just a tiny amount of Dust, but that little container would probably cost more than everything in her father’s shop.
“Yeah, it’s beautiful. Watch.” Zane tilted the little container over the silvery disc, causing Addie to gasp in alarm, but as the dust poured out, it fell into the air and then gathered there, a loose ball of shimmering, glittering dust particles that hovered over the disc but didn’t drift or fall away. “Don’t worry,” Zane whispered, “I’m not trying to lose two hundred k worth of Boxer-bits.”
Of course he thought in terms of Boxer-bits; Addie didn’t have to ask JJ to know the conversion rate was about point-eight Boxer-bits to each Sol-bit. Even so, it was a small fortune glittering in the air before her. “What’s it doing?”
“Nothing at the moment—that disc is a fancy piece of Dust-tech. It creates a field that gathers the Dust, keeping it from drifting off or scattering on the breeze. It can also measure the amount of external influence applied to the Dust it has gathered.” He looked around the restaurant outside their booth and chuckled. “The really cool thing is that unless someone has some talent, they can’t even see it. To most of those people in the restaurant, you and I are just leaning close, staring at something on the table while we chat.”
“That’s…” Addie shrugged. “That’s hard to believe.”
“I know!” He smiled and winked at her, then gestured to the ball of glowing Dust. “I’ll show you how it’s done.” He held his hand up, palm facing outward toward the Dust. “You know how you sort of touch the Dust in your matrix so you can send your consciousness through it and into your drone?” Addie licked her lips nervously but nodded. He was the first person she’d ever spoken to who seemed to understand what she was doing with Humpty. “Well, I do something similar here. I can feel the Dust out there—just beyond where the Dust matrix terminates in my hand. The closer I put my hand, the more I can sense it.”
“Okay.” Addie nodded.
“So, now that I can feel it, I just pull.” His eyes narrowed with concentration, and then the ball of nearly microscopic Dust motes began to agitate—vibrating and bouncing—individual motes separating from the cluster before being pulled back in. Zane’s scowl deepened, and Addie could see a sheen of sweat beading his forehead as he continued with whatever effort he was making. The motes swirled and pulsed but never broke free of the containment disc. After thirty seconds or so, Zane lowered his hand and wiped his brow with his napkin. “Whew!”
“Did it work?”
“Yep, look.” He stretched out one finger and tapped the silvery disc beneath the ball of Dust, and Addie saw a tiny holographic display:
> Containment Field Resistance: 58.
“Fifty-eight? Is that high?”
Zane shrugged. “It’s not my best, but it’s better than most of the folks I work with can do.” He gestured to the glittering ball of Dust. “Want to try?”
Addie picked up another date and stuffed it in her mouth, chewing noisily as her cheeks bulged. She held her hand before her mouth again, trying not to smile in embarrassment because she feared some of the chorizo would spill out. Finally, she swallowed and took another sip of her margarita before answering. “Yes, of course I want to! This is all so interesting!”
“Okay, do you need me to walk you through—” He stopped speaking as Addie held her palm out toward the ball of Dust and nervously licked her lips, waiting to see if she could even feel it. She did—a full thirty centimeters away from the Dust, she felt its warmth and a tingling sensation in her palm. It was like holding your hand out to a ball of hot socks with a bunch of static electricity built up in it. It felt soft and pliant but charged with something—potential, Addie decided.
“I can feel it,” she whispered.
“Wow! From back there?” Addie nodded, her eyes big as she glanced at Zane, wondering if she’d done something wrong. He smiled reassuringly, then reached out to take her wrist, pulling her hand within ten centimeters of the Dust. “Try from right here. Just connect with the Dust like you do your drone and pull it toward you.”
From so close, the ball of Dust felt positively hot. The skin on her palm was itching with it, almost like when a limb falls asleep and starts to wake up again. Addie stretched her consciousness into her matrix, sending her perceptions out through the impure Dust in her body and then to the ball of refined Dust. When she connected with it, she felt like laughing. It was like a hot shower for her brain. It was vibrant, powerful, and alive, and it made her heart swell with joy.
As tears sprang into her eyes, she pulled on the Dust. She could feel it wanted to come to her. The little motes swirled, rolling over each other by the thousands as they jumped and leaped, fighting to go to her but failing, each time being pulled back by the little containment disc. Tears—joyful or desperate, Addie couldn’t tell—streamed down her cheeks as she tried to pull the Dust to her, desperate to get it into her. After a while, though, her pull grew weaker, and she knew she’d exhausted whatever hidden “muscle” she was using to try to gather the stuff.
Zane, silent, a weird expression on his face, reached out to tap the silvery disc, and Addie read the display:
> Containment Field Resistance: 91.
“Holy shit, Addie,” he muttered, shock and something else, something Addie couldn’t quite read, on his face. She wanted to say it was confusion or maybe incredulity, but something in her gut told her it was jealousy. As she watched him come to grips with what he’d just witnessed, Addie regretted coming to meet him—she’d made a mistake.