Paradise Tales

Paradise Tales by Geoff Ryman Page A

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Authors: Geoff Ryman
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the position of the old.”
    Mandy says, “How you gonna do that?”
    JoJo says, “I used to make TV shows.”
    Thug says. “All we gotta do is find who Silhouette is.”
    And I get this real weird, sick feeling, and I don’t know why.
    Mandy jerks like she’s laughing to herself. She flicks cigarette ash like it’s going all over their pretty little dream. “You better get hacking,” she says.

    The next day my dear Dr. Curtis runs in to tell me we’re all about to get a visit from the cops.
    Curtis looks terrified. He looks sick. He leans against my door like they’re going to hammer it down. Plump smooth-skinned pretty little doctor, he’s got so much to lose.
    “How’s your system?” he asks, smiling like he’s relearning how to use his facial muscles. He’s got something he doesn’t want to say in front of the ordnance.
    I don’t get it. “What’s it to you?”
    He makes a noise like someone’s jammed a pin in his butt. His eyes start doing a belly dance toward the window. I look out and see that the front drive of the Happy Farm is stuffed like a turkey with police cars.
    I just say, “A shape outlined against the light?”
    I mean a silhouette. Curtis sorta settles with relief and nods yes. “You’ve been following the news.”
    I get it. The cops are here to find out if any of us nice old folks are funding Silhouette’s reign of terror. That means that they’ll be going through our accounts. For once Curtis and I have exactly the same self-interest.
    I’m a thief and I’ve never been caught and that’s not because I’m smart, but because I know I’m not. So I worry. So I prepare.
    I got about ten minutes and that’s all I need. I start running my emergency program. It looks like a rerun of pro golf. Curtis hangs around. He wants to see how I do this. I need to put on my specs, but I don’t want him to know about the transcoder.
    “Curtis, maybe you should go talk to our guests.” I mean slow them down. I mean get out of here.
    Then there’s a knock. In comes the Kid. Maybe he’s come to tell me about the cops, too. He sees Curtis, and I swear his eyes switch on with hate like lightbulbs.
    “Joao, maybe you could take Dr. Curtis out to greet our guests.” And that means: Joao help me get him out of here.
    That Kid is sussed. “You,” he says to Curtis, and punches the palm of his hand. Curtis understands that, too. Note. Not one of us has said anything that would sound bad in court.
    I hear the door shut. Finally I put on my specs and the transcoder shows me data download on one eye lens and data upload on the other.
    It’s a fake I’ve had worked out for years. It’ll cover my whole account and make it look like I’m some kind of gaga spendthrift, that I gamble a lot on a Korean site, lose my dosh, win some dosh. It matches, transaction for transaction, money in, money out.
    That’s what’s uploading. On the other lens, I’m encrypting my old data. I got maybe five minutes now.
    Just having some encrypted data on my system will be enough to make trouble. I’m ghosting the encrypted file, and then I go to get it off my disk. It starts to squirt into my transcoder.
    I hear big heavy boots. I hear Dr. Curtis babbling happily. I hear a knock on the front door. Mine? No next door.
    Six … five … four … stuff is still downloading. Three two one zero. Right, off comes the transcoder. It looks like one of the arms from my glasses. On my hard drive, iron molecules are being permanently scrambled. Sorry, Officer, I’m just this old guy and I’ve been having these terrible problems with my system.
    I go take a shower. They monitor your heartbeat and video your keystrokes, but the law says they can’t perve you in the shower.
    And while I’m in the shower I take the transcoder and like I rehearsed a hundred times, I push it up the head of my penis.
    The transcoder’s long, it’s thin. In an X-ray, it’ll look like a sexual prosthetic.
    When the knock on my door comes,

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