Decker spent the next couple of hours making small talk and mingling. The crowd was an eclectic mix of academics and students from MIT and Harvard University nearby, plus painters and sculptors, mathematicians and writers, photographers, even some chefs. More than a few were Lulu’s students, or had been at some point. Unprompted, they began singing her praises. Of course, they were also drinking her liquor.
Panem et circenses, Decker thought. Who was going to complain?
One girl, in her twenties, with the face of a spider, hairy fangs and eight eyes, turned out to be a tattoo artist from East Cambridge. Did some work on Lulu some years ago and they’d become friends, she explained. They were examining the nativity scene, featuring Barbie, G.I. Joe, and a purple-haired troll as the Christ child.
“What kind of work?” Decker asked, shouting over the music.
“Ask her yourself,” she said cryptically, moving off.
Cream replaced The Clash just as Decker came upon two men in the corner doing shooters of Cuervo. One had the head of a duck, the other a lobster. It turned out the duck was a professor of information technology at Rensselaer in Troy. Each time he took a shot, most of the liquor cascaded down his long furry beak. He and the lobster were discussing how all the major search engines had cut deals with China restricting access and compromising privacy. “Even Google capitulated,” the duck mumbled somberly. “Don’t be evil.” It was like a personal affront to him. And, despite recent hacking attempts by the Communist government, he continued, they would probably stay.
They discussed the pedigree and potency of consumer-generated media and news. “More news coverage is being generated today by ordinary people blogging and tweeting than by all the news organizations combined,” said the duck.
“More books and more music self-published. It’s a bottom-up world,” said the lobster.
“The long tail is the dog.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more. Want to Friend me?”
Without warning, the crowd near the dance floor exploded, seethed and shuddered. A girl screamed and the crowd tore apart. Decker felt his pulse quicken as a circle opened up near the balcony. Two men — one with the head of a moose, the other a walrus — stepped into the clearing.
“Not again,” said the lobster.
“What is it, a fight?” Decker asked.
“Sort of.”
The walrus and moose started to curse at each other. They circled about. Then, in unison, they suddenly stopped. They turned, faced the crowd, leaned down and picked up two objects, holding them high in the air directly over their heads — like trophies.
At first, Decker couldn’t make out what they were. They looked like toaster ovens from this distance, with arms. He squeezed through the crowd to get closer.
The men put the objects back on the floor and whipped out what appeared to be some sort of controllers.
As Decker drew nearer, it finally occurred to him. Robots! Small motorized gladiators. Moments later, the two robots lunged at each other.
They stabbed and they parried with spatulas and carving forks. They spun madly about on their wheels. The crowd pressed still closer, desperate to follow the action. Someone screamed. After several false parries, the first of the robots, with an arm like a claw, caught the second on the lip of its armor. They grunted and squealed, gears starting to smoke. The first robot slipped a bright silver spatula directly under the other one’s belly. Slowly but surely, as the crowd chanted around them, the first robot lifted the second one a foot off the ground, until — with a waving of arms — it tipped over and rolled onto its back.
Its bright silver casters continued to spin. Long thin metal legs squirmed in the air. It looked like a stainless steel cockroach, some giant metallic palmetto bug, wiggling and clattering about on the floor. Decker had a hard time looking away.
“Too bad we can’t settle all of our differences this way,” said Lulu. She was standing right next to him. She was so tiny, Decker hadn’t noticed her sneak up beside him.
“Come on, you can help me hand out the presents,” she added. “Before the Visigoths tear my condo to pieces.”
CHAPTER 16
With Decker’s assistance, Lulu brought out a platter of going-away presents for one of her colleagues, a psychology professor named Pamela who was teaching in Moscow the following semester. They were mostly gag gifts, like condoms emblazoned with the sickle and hammer, anti-Polonium jelly beans, and a host of electronic jamming devices. Pam gave a brief tearful speech, thanked her colleagues and friends, and the party began to break up soon thereafter.
When the last guest had finally departed, Lulu lowered the music and flopped down on a sofa in her workroom, an alcove off the main room near the balcony. It had been closed off during the party by curtains and — now that they were open again — Decker could see why. The place was littered with electronic knick-knacks and half-built PCs, motherboards, soldering irons, components of all shapes and sizes on workbenches nearby. She’s not very organized, he considered. Then she took off her mask.
Decker sat down on the sofa beside her, trying not to react. He took off his mask. He looked at his feet, and then up at her face once again.
In her early to mid-thirties, Lulu was startlingly beautiful — in spite of her eyebrow and nose studs, half-hidden tattoos, dark makeup and spiked EMO hair, tipped with purple and pink — which Decker hadn’t expected. Her appearance made him uncomfortable. Not the counterfeit covering. In his business, people put on all kinds of disguises. He was used to the masks people wore. It was because what lingered beneath still came out so profoundly, in such unyielding yet vulnerable lines… despite all that crap on the outside.
Lulu suddenly shivered. She reached into some hidden side pocket in her PVC bodysuit and pulled out an iPhone. “God, it’s fucking freezing in here,” she complained. “Now that everyone’s gone and, with them, their body heat.” She started to tap away at the screen. “This outfit may look cute but it’s hardly angora. Though that would be interesting. Can you imagine? Angora?”
“What are you doing?”
“Raising the temperature. My loft is a smart home, IP-enabled. You know: the Internet of things. If I wanted to, I could preheat my oven from here.”
“Or, you could — I don’t know — stand up and turn it on with your hand.”
“What are you, a Luddite?” she asked him. “You work with computers all day.”
“I’m as fond of technology as the next guy. I just think we rely on it more than we have to. More than we should. It’s a crutch, an addiction to some. I… Why do you hate the cold so much?” he asked, desperately trying to pull away from the crash.
“I was caught in a snowstorm once as a girl. Got frostbite on three of my fingers.”
“Are you serious? What happened?” he asked her, but she didn’t respond. She simply stared at her hand for a moment, daydreaming in silence.
Then she said, “I even have an aftermarket self-starter in my car in the basement so I can get her going from here, heat her up during winter remotely. I wish I could find a teaching gig in New Mexico. Somewhere warm. Anywhere but the northeast. Or Nevada. I don’t think Arizona. Too fascist. And I’m not a big fan of LA.”
Without warning, something fell to the floor only a few feet away. Decker leapt to his feet. He reached for his weapon when he saw what it was.
Some kind of toy. Another robot. Except that this one looked like a miniature dinosaur. A plastic T-Rex perhaps nine inches tall.