Lex - Vignettes 2
I can't help but wonder how many times she's caught me staring at her.
I know theres been two times i can think of... Other than just now of course. This is the first time she's said anything though.
actually, I think this is the first time she's spoken to me period.
I'll admit to having followed some of her writings before she came here. I don't know any kid who didn't. Dissent from within the city is new. I mean, historically, sure, theres been support from the ruling classes... The first civil rights movement, the French revolution.
but this is a different time. Everyone alive in the citiverse who matters anymore is a guide-child, raised with un-erring accuracy by their AI companions.; taught from day 1 that the world was as it was, and the only things worth persuing were personal fulfillment and peace: art, music, all that touchy-feely crap.
they never worked a day in their lives, and they sure as hell didn't care what happened outside their walls.
Three generations of that, in a decelled society where most people don't hit puberty till 20.
Three generations of that... and you learn not to bother waiting for change.
I guess all of this adds in, plays some part in my obsession.
Yes, i said obsession. Not just infatuation, and not just pure unadulterated intellectual interest. I'm talking about full on, cant think, can't eat, can't sleep obsession.
it wasn't always like this.
I hated her at first. Who would throw away what we all spend our short outcity lives wishing we had? She was just some privved snort who got off showing us all how bad we really had it.
It was pretty hard to ignore her writings, though. She blew open the gov't rfc's for deploying ai autoharvesters and let everyone else do the math. It didn't take long to figure out why she'd done it. A few days later every old-net blog was scrambling to break the news: what it all added up to.
Turns out the incity beauracracy wasn't making enough food to feed it's own people. They just hadn't expected people to live so damn long.
No violent crime, delayed pubescent maturation, auto accidents finally a thing of the past. Not only were people living longer, they were doing it a lot more often.
Thats not the real problem though. The rfc's for autoharvesters spelled out a solution clearly enough: make more machines to make more food.,
the problem was, they were going to do it on our fields.
Until lex published the rfc, everyone just kinda ignored the autos. Having your share bought out was like winning the lotto. The autoharvester farmed your crops for you, gave you twice the food you needed to live, and you could still live on your farm.
They even threw in a repicator for your material wants. Not one of those fancy star trek jobs they had in the city, of course, but smart enough to spit out silicon computer chips and basic machine parts. I knew more than a few ex-farmers who had rebuilt perfect repclicas of antique cars, piece by piece. A few even managed the modern city amenities with them: doctors, worker drones, comlinks to newnet. Of course this required a bit more skill - but the firmware was all flashable, and the roms were all floating around old-net, either as holdovers from the gpl heyday or warez.
All you had to know was where to look.
But I'm sidetracked again. See the real problem is - the city still eats meat.
I mean, sure, were not all hard line vegetarians out here, but for the most part, we just can't afford it.
You can feed a human being 7 times over with the food it take to raise a cow to maturity.
And thats the big problem.
with The number of autoharvesters the rfc called for deploying, many analysts said those of us on the outside would start to starve within 10 years
the irony was
this was year 5
5 years had passed between the ratification of the rfc and lex's linking to the doc- they been public -and lost amid every other gov't doc. One of the more brilliant strokes of the citiverse politicians: publish every document that crosses your screen. no human could ever hope to read them all, let alone consider the impact each one would have, not only on the city, but outside as well.
So there it was. The city was (unknowingly) planning to starve those on the outside, and we were giving the food up voluntarily. There would always be a tired outcity farmer who snapped at the chance to have a life with few wants and less work.
The story broke 6 weeks ago, spreading like wildfire first through newnet, then posted over oldnet just as quickly, if without the flair of newnet visualzations.
people talked, and meetings were called, but the belief that there was little which could be done from the outside was pretty widely held. for anything real to be done, the city govt would have to step in and change policy.
That was the final catch. once the story broke on newnet, it was clear that the cities would have to see the error and make changes. 6 weeks have passed and theres a telling silence from new washington.
They knew.
Not the petty politicans in power now, of course, they were kept in the dark to maintain plausible deniabity. I'm talking about three generations ago.
the founders knew.
they'd known from day one that eventually demand for food would outgrow supply, and exactly the effect that would have on a split society. It didnt take long to unearth the original docs. various solutions arose in early discussions. forced vegetarianism, regulated childbirth, genetically altered crops... all politically loaded issues. those that had championed real solutions had been voted out or silenced by their fear of the same.
to make matters worse, it seems no one was able to predict was the growth of the upper class. who would have guessed that after 200 years the haves would nearly outnumber the have-nots?
what amazes me in all of this is that no leaders are emerging, either among the elite or the dissident. we've all worked in ai organized efficency committees since we were old enough to participate, and the city works the same way (when they work at all). The skill of moving people to action seems to have been all but forgotten.
which, i guess, brings me back to lex.
i wish i could say i knew what she was doing here... that she had some greater plan besides playing the messenger.
i wish i could tell you why, nearly every night now, she comes to me in my dreams... dark, twisted affairs that i find myself both terrified of and increasingly drawn to, reliving them in daydreams as well as night.
I wish i could answer all of these things, but really, all i have are questions.
I walked to the center of town, where several small groups had gathered, as always, playing table games, chatting, and surfing on the oldnet terminals arranged throughout the garden. As i passed through, i realized one of the more eccentric looking kids was servicing his terminal, not surfing. I smiled at him as I passed. Not many of us knew how to repair the glass monoliths of oldnet anymore , much less took the time to do routine maintenance. Yet here he was, screwdriver, soldering iron and pruning shears in hand. out here in the where the vines grew freely, terminal maintenance was as much gardening as repair
he looked up at me and returned my smile, his face streaked with dirt, and his baggy clothes hanging loosely around his body. he had the look of a nomad - one of the kids just roaming town to town, following the raves and doing repairs and other assorted geekwork for food.
he was welcome here, bodymods, implants and all, because here, we were all freaks in our own way. outcasts, fetishists, ideallist... anyone who didn't quite fit in.
This was where we came, those of us on the outside still interested in learning. we sat at these tables and on these stairs, talking into the night. most of us are still young, comparatively, but some times wise older men and women would come, regaling us with stories of different times, the great wars won and lost, the mistakes made and repeated again. this was our forum: away from newnet and the eschelon voice data sniffers, away from the cynicism and stubbornness of our parents. This was a truly free place. if change was going to happen, in would happen here
i stopped a moment, just closing my eyes and breathing, finding a littLe bit of peace in the familiar surroundings, until a distant voice pierced the warm night air.
Germ!
i cringed, turning to see who had called me by my handle out here. it was a cityverse tradition which did not usually go over well with the adults. of course, the adult dissaproval alone was making it the defacto way for anyone under 20 to refer to one another but i was not so easily swayed.
'germanicus' i said, my voice sounding more harsh than I'd intended. I cleared my throat, realizing this was the first time i'd spoken all day.
'what?'
'my name. It's germanicus. citykids use handles, out here, use the name i was born....'
'whatever. geez. listen man, she's coming.'
suddenly, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and i went silent, allowing the youngster to cut me off uncontested. Definitely not my usual style. Something was off.
I was off.
i stood there for a moment, pondering my own fear. Was i really this scared of this tiny girl, whose body's scarcely 16? Rationally, I knew i could crush her without so much as a second thought. I rubbed the skin on my arms to make the goosebumps recede... Was i really uncontrollably frightened of her?
The uneasyness in my stomach told me yes... but there was something else. I could feel myself becoming aroused. I was scared of Lex, that was certain, but there was no way to hide the fact that she had become the focus of my obsession. I closed my eyes for a moment, and before me flashed the images from the dreams she came to me in. Wild, dangerous acts, lewd enough that I embarassed myself thinking of them in this public a place. I don't think I can even talk about them
I had to see her, talk to her. I had to understand why she so completely occupied my brain. In my dreams -our dreams, it seemed - there was this undercurrent of power exchange. One moment I surrendered every thing to her, the next her to me. The more I thought about the twisted games, the more my fear subsided and became excitement and arousal. I closed my eyes again, again the images flashed. It seemed so real.
Pulling myself from the mental tangent, I turned in the direction my friend had come from, peering down the path to see if she followed. Sure enough, i was soon able to make out her form. Without the tight sleek harness and simple overclothes that were the staple of the elite, she looked positively outcity. At first glance, she looked like one of us, but also like something from the past: features culled from the kids of the late 21st, the rebels of the second civil rights movement, peppered her sillohuette. Looking closer the shaved head, tattoos and piercings made her seem almost alien, like a punk straight out of that era, but the 'stripwear', the functional, baggy multipiece garments so many outcity kids wore made her look more like one of us than anything else.
i looked more closely as she approached. without her harness under the stripwear, you could see patches of her milky skin through the thick black bands of fabric. I took probably too long a glance, catching a glimpse of her nearly naked form beneath the strips.
She was coming closer and closer, walking straight for the heart of the forum. I thought she'd walk on past me, as she always has, but as she was passing she turned towards me, as if keenly aware i'd been watching her. Her eyes narrowed slighltly, and she peered deep into my eyes for a moment. I half expected her to say something about my leering at her, but as if recognizing something in me, she only smiled, and ever so gently touched my cheek.
I was startled, but more at my own reaction than at her actions. It felt natural, like something she'd done, something we'd done before. I raised my hand to touch hers, and kissed her palm. Releasing her hand, I gave a slight bow with my head, almost a nod. I'd done this before. I was sure of it now, this was a ritual, and I knew all the motions.
Where had I been? When had I learned these things. My mind raced as I searched for the meaning of what had just happened. Flitting images of our games, the dark plays that occurred in sleep began to surface. I felt as if my stomach would come up through my lungs. My heart was racing.
This was not a dream... this was not a fantasy. Moments ago, I'd been watching her from the distance, dreaming of what it would be to touch her, and suddenly, here she was less than a meter in front of me.
Suddenly, enough of the memories of our shared dreamworld began to surface for me realize the implications of what had just passed between us. My kiss of her palm was my pledge to her. Until she released me, I was hers - mind body and soul, to do with as she wished. I had no idea if I could, or wanted to, go against that pledge.
What had I just begun?
"It's time." Was all she said as she turned from me, and continued on to the center of the forum. She raised her right hand towards the sky. As she lifted her arm, the stripware shifted, reshaped itself to match her movements. As the fabric moved and the open slits passed over her body, it became plain that she was truly wearing nothing of the cityverse, and almost nothing at all. A strip of stretchy, black, shiny synthtex wrapped her upper chest, molding to and barely concealing her breasts. I could make out the two rings adorning her nipples clearly outlined by the synthtex. A similar strip circled her hips, hugging her lower body.
I realized that it was as much practicallity as fetishwear. A smart garment like stripwear can only account for the body of it's host and other smart fabrics. Any other bulky fabrics between the host and the stripwear would get in the way and be ripped to shreds. Had she kept the harness, the two garments could have interfaced, but it was clear she wanted nothing to do with the citiverse society. Stripwear was decidely 3rd party. No tracking apps. Lex was invisible as far as the citiverse systems were concerned, and the little fabric beneath the stripwear she did wear did nothing more than provide her base protection for her modesty and her privates.
From her upstreached right hand, a small luminecent object began to rise. I recognized the firefly as soon as it left her hand. The little nano-insect rose higher and higher above her, it's light never fading and even seeming to intensify as it ascended. Soon, one light split into two, then two to four, and so on. Within a minute, a pole of light rose straight up from where Lex was standing to at least a kilometer above her head. She moved her arm down, and then pushed both arms away from her, as if parting the sea.
From the top of the pole, the quickly multiplying fireflies swarmed and grew, much as water from a fountain rises and then spills down in a perfect dome. It lit the forum in brilliant white light as the insects descended to the ground and then flitted from existence. We were standing at the dead center an artificial amphitheatre, created in an instant.
This was no game Lex was playing. Orchestration of nano-swarms of that scale takes massive processing power. AI on the scale of...
On the scale of a guide.
Lex had hacked her guide.
As the realization hit me, Lex's eyes met mine. She smiled again, and nodded, and then spoke.
But she wasn't me she was speaking to. Her voice was carried and relayed to everyone in the amphitheatre by the fireflies - whispers in the ear of everyone within range. I heard the whispers of course, echoed in my ear even as she spoke them beside me, just as it was echoed to everyone in the the forum.
"You have come here looking for change. Look above you... look around you. I have brought you the tools to make that change - now I'm asking you to come to me."
