I rode my bike to Lexington Reservoir yesterday. Great to see some sun. I started the third of my “Postsingular” stories. I’m linking the three together, and I think I’ll end up making it into a novel. This one has the working title, “The Big Pig Posse,” and is set about a year after the Singularity of the orphidnet has taken hold.
Jayjay and the Big Pig Posse awoke to a mustached guy prodding them with a wide broom.
“No chinges,” said Jayjay, his homeboy Sonic already standing at his side. “Stupid janitor.” The girls were on their feet too: Kittie and Thuy, their faces brown and greasy in the rainy-day October light.
“No mas janitor,” said the guy. “Maintenance manger and security guard. Get your pinche asses outta my hall. The Job Center’s about to open.”
“You want some of this?” taunted Sonic, grabbing his own crotch. “Este firme, Jayjay. We can take this pendejo down.”
“Can the gangbanger routine, boys,” said Kittie, turning and walking to the glass street door. “We’re already dazzled. Come on, Thuy. I’m seeing a bunch of fresh-dumped pancakes behind Monogrub. Still hot, if we hurry.”
Jayjay gave the janitor a little poke in the chest; the janitor swung his fist; Jayjay ducked. Jayjay and Sonic followed the girls out, standing for a moment in the rain-shadow of the office-building. The streets were liquid, the rain drops popping circles into the sheen, the spastic gusty wind making riffles, a few electric cars hissing past.
Jayjay looked into his head, checking the orphidnet view of the Monogrub trashcans, and indeed he saw a nice batch of griddle cakes, maybe a dozen. Only a block away.
But first, as long as he was focused on the orphidnet, Jayjay said hello to some of the beezie AI agents that lived there, and, what the hey, took a quick hit off the Big Pig up high in the virtual world, the outrageously rich and intricate Big Pig, stuffed with beautiful feelings and ideas like a birthday piata, ahhh, the white light energy of the Big Pig.
In exchange for the hit, the Big Pig downloaded some temporary data onto Jayjay — the data blocks always had the form of incredibly accurate visual images, today it was a still from a movie showing a bearded guy’s head being swallowed by a gaint worm, beezie info coded no doubt into the angles of the worm’s teeth and hairs of the beard — whatever.
Thuy was in there suckling on the Big Pig too, and Jayjay laughed a little to see her next to him, Thuy his litter-mate, wheenk wheenk. They might have stayed there for quite some time, but Kittie was shaking his arm, wiry Kittie focused only on the Monogrub trashcan, worried that some other unhoused individuals might score the breakfast goodies before the Big Pig Posse could make the scene.
For his part, Sonic was standing at the Job Center’s glass door, projecting virtual emoticons at the janitor — turds, knives and skulls visible in the built-in heads-up-display that overlaid their views of the world, thanks to the orphids on their scalps like nanolice. The janitor didn’t care. He had a job, the Big Pig posse was in the rain, the door was locked behind them.
“We gotta find a steady place to sleep,” said Sonic as they splashed down the sidewalk towards the Monogrub parking lot.
“Ask President Bernardo,” said Thuy. “He always helps.”
In the year since the orphidnet had come online the whole world had become a realtime charity bazaar. Any neighborhood was like a storehouse, with all kinds of things waiting unused in attics, garages, back rooms, there for the asking. President Bernardo Lampton was all over this development; his Common Ground Party workers had managed to enlist a cadre of beezie agents to help people find whatever they needed. Bernardo had a strong interest in making the orphidnet seem good, what with it having come into being on his watch, and with the presidential election was next month.
“Where can we four live with no rent, Bernardo?” said Jayjay. “We’re tired of crashing in halls.”
Bernardo appeared in their overlays; trudging along next to them, dressed in baggy jeans and a hooded sweatshirt same as them. “Get an S. U. V.,” suggested Bernardo. “There’s a nice big one near here, with enough gas to drive it a mile or two. The owner would even give you the papers, camaradas.” Bernardo gestured and a little three-dimensional map popped up, with an image of a enlarged high-end S. U. V. angling out of it.
“We’ll be like yuppies!” exclaimed Thuy in a pleased tone. “Good old President Bernardo — hey! What’s he doing now?”
With an almost imperceptible glitch, control of the President Bernardo icon had shifted to one of his political opponents. Mouth stretched in a slack, imbecilic grin, the President dropped his pants, squatted on the sidewalk, took a crap, wiped his ass with a pocket-sized American flag, and then fumbled in his crotch to begin —
“Come on!” called Kittie, looking back at them. “We’re gonna lose the pancakes. Oh, what is that supposed to be?”
“Heritagist attack ad,” said Jayjay, looking away from the degraded President Bernardo Lampton. “They’re pumping out all these spoofs and spam for the election.” Lampton’s image duck-walked towards Kittie, the President leering up at her as he fondled himself.
A banner unfurled across their visual fields, reading Vote for Joe Too Doakes! Beneath it appeared two nearly identical men: former President Joe Doakes, and his recently cloned copy Joe Too Doakes. President Doakes had been convicted of treason and executed by lethal injection a few years back — the fallout of his scheme to turn the entire planet Earth into a Dyson sphere of nanocomputers supposedly running simulations of all the former Earthlings. It had come out in the trial that Joe Doakes also planned to use some special access codes to install himself as President-for-Eternity. But the U. S. electorate had an exceedingly short memory.
“I was a private man,” said Joe Doakes, with the very slightest gesture towards the obscene Bernardo Lampton. “A clean man. Unjustly executed by activist judges. We can have the good days back. We can have a lasting paradise safe from woe. Joe Too Doakes in November.” Joe Too crinkled his close-set eyes and waved, his face stern but with the faintest hint of a smile at the corners of his narrow mouth.
