‘I’m still me, Andrea.’
‘You’re a pattern of memories running on a dynamic platform that’s constantly renewing itself. The pattern is all that persists, the self looking back on all it has been and knowing itself from that. That’s what makes you you, Jack, not the passing fact of your flesh. And that’s what makes me me. I may be running on a different platform, but the pattern of me is unchanged and I fight hard to protect it. I am Andrea, Jack, I’m the same person as that different person all those years ago, just as you’re the same person as that different Jack who loved me then.’
[Oo, philosophy! It’s making my head hurt. I say cut to the chase and snog her.]
[Shut up, Fist.]
[Grabbing a glass of champagne … Activating your sub-dermal presence simulators … Now she can touch you! Over to you, lover boy!]
Andrea noticed Jack’s distraction. ‘Fist?’
‘He has strong opinions.’
‘Is he real?’
Jack smiled. ‘He’s certainly got a mind of his own. And he’s going to be around after I’m gone. So yes, he’s real.’
[Of course I am!]
‘He’s quite excited about this,’ continued Jack. ‘About you.’
Andrea leant towards him. Presence simulators showed him her warmth. Virtual breath brushed against his skin. She touched the side of his face.
‘And is he right to be?’ she said.
Chapter 29
It was just before dawn. Jack kicked open a door which led to a stairway that had wrapped itself around a construction which might once have been a gas storage cylinder. Now, it was some sort of scrap-metal recycling centre. Looking down into it from the walkway on its rim was like looking into an iron maw studded with broken teeth. Spotlights pulled vaguely identifiable machine shapes from drifts of rust-tinted tangle.
[ I can’t believe I’ve got an automatic intimacy shutoff!] grumbled Fist. [ I didn’t even know it existed.]
[ Never triggered it before,] replied Jack, turning away from scrap metal to look out over Docklands.
[Oh well, at least I got to see you and East together. I suppose you can’t really be intimate with a god.] He popped into view just next to Jack, perched on the railings. [ I ended up playing Andrea’s memory code back again. Remarkable piece of work. She’s sharp, that girl of yours.]
[ I know that.]
Dim streets curved up and away in front of them, losing themselves in height and darkness. Lights glowed softly – some from windows, some from streetlamps, some from flyers and cars. They sketched in the places around them, hinting at different kinds of buildings, different kinds of lives. In its dormant state, Docklands was a city of implications.
[Seeing it without the weave seems so natural now,] Jack commented. [Gods, I used to think quiet rooms were peaceful. But even in them you’d have a few sprites buzzing around, to remind you it was all still out there. To stop you from panicking.]
[ We can activate any time you want. You really should get back onweave, Jack. It’s been seven years. With me behind you, you’ll see everything.]
[ That’s why we’ve come up here.]
The soft whine of distant flyer engines pulsed down from above. The spinelights were still dark, silhouettes defined by the lights of the city beyond and behind them. A series of loud cracks rang out from them.
[ They’re waking up the spinelights,] Jack explained. [A few minutes and it’ll be daylight. Take me onweave while they come online.]
[ What?]
[ Wake me up with the city, Fist.]
[ I could have everything open right now.]
[ No. Do it step by step. I want to make sure I remember all the details.]
At first, it seemed that nothing was changing. Then the soft darkness began to lose something of its density. Dawn was dusting the city with presence, pulling definition into being. As it emerged from the gloom, Fist unveiled the first, most basic component of the weave: the grid that lay over the city, providing a spatial reference point for every single active weavepoint. Straight white lines threw themselves across Docklands, imposing horizontal and vertical regularity on urban chaos. Pale grey lines leapt up from the corner of each square, striating cylindrical airspace into an infinity of cubes.
[ What scale are we on, Fist?]
[ Ten by ten metres. The spatial mapping goes right down to millimetres. But if I showed you those gridlines, you’d see nothing else.]
[ Fair enough.]
[ Now, locations. I’m assuming you just want to see the major ground tags? I can show you descriptors for all the cubes – but the data’s so dense, you wouldn’t see anything past thirty or forty metres away …]
[ Just the tags, Fist. And street-level detail, nothing more defined than that.]
Where there had been a vista, there was suddenly content. Red and yellow lines streaked across Docklands, parsing space. Letters danced into words, defining streets, squares, neighbourhoods, buildings and stations. A patchwork of colours leapt across the landscape, shouting information into the gathering day. They flowed from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, shifting shade with each one, turning the city into a vast artist’s palette.
[ That’s lovely,] Jack told Fist. [ Now let’s see the people too.]
[ What level of detail?]
[ The basics.]
[ I’ll break them down by sex – red for men, blue for women.]
[Show me the sweatheads, too.]
[OK – black for them. Minimum scale. One pixel, one person.]
Fist waved his hand and the great patchwork before them was dusted with tiny dots. Many of the red and blue pixels were clumped in residential areas. Many were still in bed, or at least at home. Some were already travelling to work. Streets were lightly spotted with red and blue. Trains showed as moving lines of colour, leaping between the long, thin scatterings that were station platforms.
[ They’ll be rammed when it comes to rush hour,] said Fist. [Squashed in like squishies!]
[ Fist!]
[And all those sweatheads!]
The town was speckled with black. Most were clumped together in little groups.
[Still asleep in their factories,] said Jack.
[ Factories?]
[ The places where they hide and drop sweat together. That’s what they’re called.]
[Aren’t sweatheads dangerous when they’re high?]
[ Not if you leave them alone. InSec keep them out of the way.]
A few of the black dots were beginning to move towards train stations and major roads.
[ The early degenerate catches the worm!] chirped Fist. [ I wonder if we can see Akhmatov?]
[ I thought you’d completely anonymised him.]
[ I left some personal tags on him.]
Fist’s eyes clacked shut in concentration. [ There he is!] he said, pointing up and to the right. A white circle highlighted a black dot on a small residential street. [ He’s in the back room of a café.]
[ I wonder if someone can see him? I thought you said he’d be invisible.]
[ They’re still closed, Jack. Perhaps he’s broken in there to shelter.]
[ He’s just a distraction. We’ve got the basics up and running. Trip the entertainment and commercial layer.]
A shotgun blast of logos punched themselves into being. With them came the howl of a thousand advertising jingles, a visual and aural cacophony carving into Jack’s mind like a punch. Jack doubled over in pain, eyes tight shut, hands going to his ears.
‘FIST!’ he screamed.
[Shit! Sorry!] The roar of commerce subsided as quickly as it had begun. [ I forgot to put the limiters on.]
[Gods’ sake, Fist. Nobody looks at it all at once.] Jack opened his eyes, pulled his hands from his ears and shook his head. Now there was just a hubbub. The world bustled with icons and animations and words and music. Chain logos repeated themselves across the city. Slices of pizza danced on fat little legs, coffee mugs fluttered on glossy brown wings and an idealised market stallholder sung about his wares. If Jack focused on a particular logo it would expand to fill about a quarter of his field of vision. If he waited a second or two more, details of special offers would sing out from it.