Asimov's Science Fiction: September 2013 by Penny Publications Page B
Authors: Penny Publications
Tags: Asimov's #452
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she got back to Bridgeport.
After she was done, she sat and stared at the book for several minutes, marveling at how it stayed there instead of going away. She flipped back and read the first page again, and it never asked her for more money for another view. The criminality of it was deliciously satisfying. It was like the joke about the Irishman and the bottle of whiskey that would refill itself as soon as it was empty.
Shona's angry reaction in the cheap hotel room in Moshi took Bill by surprise. He'd only been trying to demonstrate to her the ins and outs of one corner of the world, a little corner that he happened to know about. She acted as if it was his responsibility. He tried to put it out of his mind—his cousin was, after all, a crazy artist with a sodden cerebrum—but the episode kept nagging at him.
At work, he tried to make a case for releasing the original, unreadable version of the Kerouac book ("raw and uncut!") alongside of the vid and sense versions, but his boss ruled against him. She said it would dilute the brand.
They'd erased the note Yuen left on the phone, but the words kept going through his head.
Here's another "slingshot," in case you need one. You probably don't, in which case please forgive the impertinence.
Obviously his great-grandfather had had Bill's job in mind, and disapproval was implied. But why? He felt like the reporter in
Citizen Kane
trying to figure out what "rosebud" meant.
One morning two years later, Shona's socialnet woke her. She felt like last night must have ended with her being run over by a team of Clydesdales.
"Hello," an artif icial intelligence said when she answered the call. It had painted itself on the screen as a sexless mannequin's head. "I'm a representative of New England Regional Public Peace," the golem chirped soullessly. "I
do
hope I'm not calling too early in the morning."
Shona had had these faux-cordial conversations with the police before, but in the past the object carefully hidden outside the social wall's field of view had been a pill bottle of xylecisans, or a ziplock baggie full of Virginia tobacco. The unspoken question had been,
Who ratted me out? My dealer? That guy who bought a painting and smoked a cig with me afterward?
But that was local-police stuff. If NERPP was calling, it wasn't because she'd passed out microscopic party hats to her neurons. This time, the carefully hidden object was the phone. The question this time around:
Who ratted me out? Was it Binti, because I let her have a copy of
Half Magic
to read to her son?
Bill was washing his crawlie when Fari opened the door to the garage and stood on the steps.
"Honey," his wife asked, "did you hear that Shona got cogmodded?"
"Cogmodded?" Wow, she'd been in trouble before, but nothing that serious. "Says who?"
"Andy, her dealer."
"Dealer..."
"Art dealer."
"Oh." He wrung the washcloth out into the bucket and stood up. "I thought she was doing so well. She had that exhibition. Did she start doing..."
xylies again?
He didn't complete the sentence because of the look on Fari's face. She was leaning against the frame of the door next to where the house's eye was mounted, with her own eyes rotated to the extremes of their orbits in a comically exaggerated attempt to draw his attention to the camera.
"Want to take a walk?" she asked.
"Uh, sure."
Fari slipped on a pair of flip-flops and led Bill out into the November evening. When they passed a public peace waldo, Bill nodded and said hello, as he always did—after all, whoever was operating the big bipedal form by telepresence was a human being, and not getting paid much—but he felt now as though the pleasantry had turned into a subterfuge. They came to the little public park near their house that had barely enough space for a swing set and a climbing wall.
"All right," Fari said without lowering her voice, "here we are in the park, where we have an expectation of privacy."
They were alone in the park, but—"Honey, there's
After she was done, she sat and stared at the book for several minutes, marveling at how it stayed there instead of going away. She flipped back and read the first page again, and it never asked her for more money for another view. The criminality of it was deliciously satisfying. It was like the joke about the Irishman and the bottle of whiskey that would refill itself as soon as it was empty.
Shona's angry reaction in the cheap hotel room in Moshi took Bill by surprise. He'd only been trying to demonstrate to her the ins and outs of one corner of the world, a little corner that he happened to know about. She acted as if it was his responsibility. He tried to put it out of his mind—his cousin was, after all, a crazy artist with a sodden cerebrum—but the episode kept nagging at him.
At work, he tried to make a case for releasing the original, unreadable version of the Kerouac book ("raw and uncut!") alongside of the vid and sense versions, but his boss ruled against him. She said it would dilute the brand.
They'd erased the note Yuen left on the phone, but the words kept going through his head.
Here's another "slingshot," in case you need one. You probably don't, in which case please forgive the impertinence.
Obviously his great-grandfather had had Bill's job in mind, and disapproval was implied. But why? He felt like the reporter in
Citizen Kane
trying to figure out what "rosebud" meant.
One morning two years later, Shona's socialnet woke her. She felt like last night must have ended with her being run over by a team of Clydesdales.
"Hello," an artif icial intelligence said when she answered the call. It had painted itself on the screen as a sexless mannequin's head. "I'm a representative of New England Regional Public Peace," the golem chirped soullessly. "I
do
hope I'm not calling too early in the morning."
Shona had had these faux-cordial conversations with the police before, but in the past the object carefully hidden outside the social wall's field of view had been a pill bottle of xylecisans, or a ziplock baggie full of Virginia tobacco. The unspoken question had been,
Who ratted me out? My dealer? That guy who bought a painting and smoked a cig with me afterward?
But that was local-police stuff. If NERPP was calling, it wasn't because she'd passed out microscopic party hats to her neurons. This time, the carefully hidden object was the phone. The question this time around:
Who ratted me out? Was it Binti, because I let her have a copy of
Half Magic
to read to her son?
Bill was washing his crawlie when Fari opened the door to the garage and stood on the steps.
"Honey," his wife asked, "did you hear that Shona got cogmodded?"
"Cogmodded?" Wow, she'd been in trouble before, but nothing that serious. "Says who?"
"Andy, her dealer."
"Dealer..."
"Art dealer."
"Oh." He wrung the washcloth out into the bucket and stood up. "I thought she was doing so well. She had that exhibition. Did she start doing..."
xylies again?
He didn't complete the sentence because of the look on Fari's face. She was leaning against the frame of the door next to where the house's eye was mounted, with her own eyes rotated to the extremes of their orbits in a comically exaggerated attempt to draw his attention to the camera.
"Want to take a walk?" she asked.
"Uh, sure."
Fari slipped on a pair of flip-flops and led Bill out into the November evening. When they passed a public peace waldo, Bill nodded and said hello, as he always did—after all, whoever was operating the big bipedal form by telepresence was a human being, and not getting paid much—but he felt now as though the pleasantry had turned into a subterfuge. They came to the little public park near their house that had barely enough space for a swing set and a climbing wall.
"All right," Fari said without lowering her voice, "here we are in the park, where we have an expectation of privacy."
They were alone in the park, but—"Honey, there's
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