“Sure, but these disguises will still fool people just using famscans,” D_Light said.
Lily furrowed her eyebrows slightly and said, “I must confess that I do not follow all of this discourse, but might I make a suggestion?”
Everyone turned to regard Lily; even the familiars fixed their cold eyes on her.
Upon gaining their attention, she said, “I would often go for walks at night, but as a precaution I would go for a swim before returning home. A scent cannot easily be followed through the water. The lake I swim in is only a few miles from here.”
No one answered her. Rather, they opened a conference blink with one another, again leaving Lily out. Despite some hesitation by members of the party regarding swimming in a cold and possibly dangerous lake, it was finally decided that going anywhere was better than staying put to be hunted down.
At last, Lyra said out loud, “Thank you, Lily. Let’s have a look at your lake.”
They followed a path covered by gold-colored fungi that offered excellent traction; it yielded enough to make walking comfortable, but not so much as to be extra work. Brian, skinned as a retro wrestler complete with evil leather mask, strutted ahead of the others, vigilantly grokking everything in sight. Djoser and Amanda lagged in the back, Amanda deftly massaging Djoser’s shoulder as they walked. Lyra was in the middle, apparently lost in thought. D_Light walked beside Lily, mesmerized by the undulating colors of her shawl. “You said you didn’t understand what we were saying earlier?” D_Light asked her quietly.
“Very little,” she nearly whispered. “What is a famscan?”
“Do you know anything-”
D_Light was startled by a nectar bat, the size of an eagle, flapping by on its leathery wings. I’m a jumpy newbie demon, he thought. Gotta get used to it.
Lily raised her eyebrows at him, and he quickly tried again. “Do you know anything about familiars?” He nodded toward his cat as it prowled just ahead of them.
“Some. I have used one before,” Lily answered.
“A famscan is an optical scanner familiars use to see light similar to a human, which can then be fed into its master’s mind. The reason these are bad for us is because of grokking.”
Quizzically, Lily looked over at him again. D_Light smiled and said, “Right. So, grokking is something strangers do to each other all the time. Let’s say you see someone you think is interesting.” D_Light winked at her. “The first thing most people do is discreetly have their familiar take a visual of the person with its famscan. Then they search the social registries to find the person’s profile. From there you can find out all kinds of stuff about the person.”
“How intrusive!” Lily recoiled. “But, well, maybe not,” she said thoughtfully. “Those profiles are voluntary, right?”
“Yes, and people love to blab on and on about themselves, so most players don’t mind being grokked,” he replied. “And why should they? No one’s finding out anything you’re not volunteering, and chances are that info is going to be pretty idealized.” He chuckled. “There’s always stuff on people in the Cloud besides their profile-stuff that might not be so flattering.”
Lily grinned. “Hmm, it still sounds a little creepy.”
“Not at all, once you get used to it,” D_Light assured her. “In fact, most players love it. For example, there are a lot of public places with the sole purpose of being seen and seeing what there is to see. These places are called grokstas. A groksta could be in an outdoor setting, like a traditional park, or indoors, like at a club. Of course, to most players the entire world is a groksta.”
They had passed by dozens of people on the trail. Most of them had familiars. Lily wondered if any of them had grokked her.
“Actually,” D_Light said, hesitating for a moment, “I have to confess that the first thing I did when I saw you was give you a grok.”
Lily rolled her eyes up at him. “I was wearing my cloak, was I not? You couldn’t ‘get a visual.’”
“No, no, your hood was off. You were under that tree just staring up into the branches.” D_Light hoped he was not blushing. Meanwhile, Brian had slowed down ahead and was cocking his head sideways as though attempting to listen in. D_Light slowed his own pace to widen the gap.
They were quiet for a moment. Then D_Light said, “But you weren’t in the register. In fact, there was nothing at all on you in the Cloud. You’re a demon-I know that now-but you didn’t come up as one when I grokked you.”
Lily was not eager to talk about why this would be, or anything else about herself, so she employed the strategy of harvesting information from D_Light at a furious rate. She had an endless array of questions that she fired off in rapid succession, and each answer prompted additional questions. As they spoke they watched the birds and bats gliding on the air currents high above. The two were so absorbed in this interview that when they finally reached the lake, they nearly tripped headlong into it.
CHAPTER 21
The beady eyes of fish #4332, which resembled the head of a pushpin, stared out into the murk unblinkingly. Its vision was poor, but a fish like this did not need to see. In fact, it had few needs at all. Like most animals throughout the eons, only two essentials existed for it-feeding and reproduction. Fish #4332 had no predators in the lake to worry about, which was a fortunate thing since it was a predator’s dream. It had no teeth for defense-it did not need them. The algae it fed upon (algae #12543) was high in nutrition, easy to swallow, and easy to digest. The fish could not swim swiftly, for it had no tail. Its tiny pectoral fins, which fluttered furiously when they were engaged, afforded the animal just enough locomotion to slowly approach its food, and not even that if there were any currents to contend with.
The water-dwelling animal was merely a streamlined oval hunk of meat that grew larger as it lazily grazed on the algae that greased the surface of the lake with streaks of brown and green. The highlight of its life was releasing its eggs, which were pre-fertilized since this product was gene-clamped and could not benefit from sexual reproduction. It was rumored that one of the wetgineers who designed #4332 added a primitive pleasure feedback loop so that at some level the creature could enjoy this climactic moment. It was also rumored that this resulted in a stiff point penalty for the smart-ass wetgineer; brain matter, nerves, and the like cost energy-energy that could be better used creating meat and fat.
One additional feature that was added to the creature was an instinctual attraction to light. At night, robotic trawlers would shine lights on the water and wait for the fish to collect in large, slowly rippling mobs near the surface. When adequate numbers gathered, the automated nets would scoop them up. Fishing had never been easier or more efficient.
Floating motionlessly in the lake, slowly gulping the murky waters that passed over its gills, the fish now saw something, albeit dimly. It was a disturbance in the surface above. In addition to light, such fish were also attracted to any oddity on the surface. It often meant that fish flakes, a welcome supplement to their regular algae fare, had been poured in from the bright sky, zigzagging downward as they sank. The fish, and many others of its kind, began whirring its tiny pectoral fins to slowly make its journey toward the splashing above.
Other than Lily and Brian, everyone was having a devil of a time swimming. Brian’s armor provided floatation thanks to the tiny nanofiber-lined air pockets designed to provide padding to protect against blunt force trauma. Lily, to her credit, was simply an excellent swimmer. The others paddled feebly over the surface of Lake Washington, desperately clinging onto their respective buoyant familiars to keep themselves afloat. Amanda, who did not have a familiar, was weighted down by her swords and panted and spat as she struggled along.