Crashing Heaven (20 page)

[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.

[ I’d forgotten how much I hated that.]

[ I’ll sort it.]

[ You can block it?]

[Most people couldn’t, but I can!]

The logos became less hyperactive.

[ I’m sure there weren’t so many when I left,] sighed Jack.

[ Is that really a pole-dancing hamburger?]

[ I’m afraid so.]

[ Your human cultural achievements never fail to amaze me.]

[ The void sites have come online too.]

[ They sit in the marketing layer? Wow.]

Children’s faces hung over the city, monochrome memories of the lost. The images reset every thirty seconds or so, one sad face melting into the next. Sometimes a word would flash up – ‘Remember’, for example, or ‘Innocent’ or ‘Gone’.

[Depressing,] said Fist glumly.

[ They’re meant to be. Let’s have the social feeds.]

[OK …]

The geography of Docklands implied social networks. Interconnected engagement webs exploded across the landscape, making them visible. Informal groupings throbbed busily, as people entered their first status updates of the day and caught up with friends across the city. Dormant corporate networks shimmered through and beyond them. Soon they too would wake to life. Some would converge into rich, dense clumps, as employees settled into offices, factories, or shops. Some would remain stretched across the city, virtual businesses whose employees worked in a close digital proximity that made distance irrelevant. Some would pull workers out of Docklands entirely, into the Wart or Homelands. And some would leap into the void, clambering up the Spine to the wharves or beyond.

[ What’s everyone saying?] asked Jack.

The morning’s babble rose up around him. It was difficult to separate the messages. Excited voices shrilled joy at a new dawn, a new partner, even just an excellent cup of coffee, while the less perky dreaded the upcoming working day, bitched about waking up alone again, or bemoaned hangovers.

[ They’re all soooo mundane,] groaned Fist.

[ It’s what people do. It’s just as important as the big stuff.]

[ It’s pointless. What’s next?]

[Show me the Pantheon.]

[ You want to look at the gods? They’ll look right back at you.]

[ I trust your security arrangements, Fist.]

[ I’ll call them. They might be hard to damp at first. Close your eyes.]

[ Fist …]

[ No, really.]

Jack shut his eyes, and the world vanished. For a moment the hubbub of morning voices filled his ear, then that too died away. A breeze sang through the metal that surrounded him. Then a great flash broke in the sky, bright even through closed eyes. A deep, loud industrial hum shook itself into being. It sounded like a choir of machines chanting in a metal church.

[Containing the signal, Jack.]

The hum became a roar and then softened, modulating into a background throb that was almost gentle. There were eleven more flashes of light. Each was accompanied by a pulse of noise that Fist contained, again and again coming to terms with the numinous.

[ How’s it going?] asked Jack.

[Difficult to manage their outputs without feeding back our signatures, but it’s just about done. There – open your eyes!]

The world had changed. The Spine had been replaced by six great icons of the divine, representing each of the Pantheon. Only two appeared remotely human. There was Kingdom with his shaven head and East, looking reliably dazzling. She appeared in full figure, her clothes shimmering as they shifted and changed with the fashion whims of the moment. The Eastware in Jack’s mind responded to her presence, until Fist hushed it. For a moment Jack was at one with entire monasteries of her followers, solemnly hymning her dazzling style.

Then, there were the more abstract deities. The Rose’s petals were as violently red as they’d always been but the sharp green thorns partially hidden beneath them were entirely new. Sandal’s crystal cube rotated as slowly and deliberately as ever. The Twins were represented by a great set of constantly moving scales. First one side was in the ascendant, then the other. And of course, there was Grey.

He was a fallen god, no longer capable of acting as a free agent. But his corporate structures had not yet been fully absorbed by his competitors. Thousands of people still needed to use his apps, access data held on his servers, or call in other ways on his strategic and financial services. So his raven was still present, though it now made his broken status humiliatingly clear. A great iron band ran around its body, holding its wings tight to its sides. A silver chain glittered around its legs, and then ran up to its beak, holding it shut. A rag was tied around its head, covering its eyes. It had also been stripped of any animation.

[ That’s sad to see,] said Jack. [ It used to be so alert.]

The bird’s gaze had once constantly flickered back and forth across Docklands, tracking every single commercial transaction.

[ They’re … huge, Jack.]

[ You get used to them. After a while, you stop taking much notice.]

[ I can’t imagine that,] breathed Fist.

Thousands of slender silver threads drifted out from the base of each icon, falling away into the city. Each represented a link to an individual worshipper, dancing with sparkling light as data ran along it. Twined together, they showed the relative user bases of each Pantheon member.

[Look at Grey’s bundle,] said Fist.

It was far thinner than those descending from the other eleven icons, twine to their rope, and much duller – the colour of lead, not silver.

[ I’m surprised he’s still got that many followers.] Jack paused for a moment, suddenly thoughtful. [One more thing,] he continued. [Let’s take a look at my parents.]

[ I can see your father. And talking with Issie’s helped me track fetches. There’s your mother!]

[Get rid of everyone else.]

An entire population shimmered into nothing, leaving only a single red pixel right next to a single blue one, in a distant street rolling up behind the Spine.

[ They must be in bed.]

Jack remembered childhood nights, and the deep security of knowing that his parents were asleep in the next room. The knowledge of their closeness was always a ward against the small difficulties of a Docklands child’s life.

[Can we look at them?]

He was surprised at how quiet his voice was.

[Oh yes,] piped Fist. [And perhaps there’ll be some action! That’ll make up for last night.]

[ Fucking hell, Fist,] sighed Jack. [ If that’s what they’re doing, we’ll let them be. Now, how to see them?]

[Spoilsport,] replied Fist. [And, let’s see. A camera nest’s the best way, they’re all over the place. It’ll be quite risky though – they run on Rosecode, she’s tough.]

[ If Harry can hack camera nests, I’m sure you can.]

[ That sleazy fuck. We’ll have to be quick.]

Fist closed his eyes and threw his mind out into the weave, searching for a lens to bring Jack’s parents into focus. Jack stared up at the two dots, lost in sadness at his distance from them.

[Got it!]

A square of light flashed into being, resolving into a street of brightly coloured plastic boxes. It was like looking directly into a memory.

[ The camera nest’s got droneflies mounted on it. Just snagging one …]

The view in the window changed as the dronefly lifted up and moved down the street to hang outside an upstairs window. The curtains were drawn, but the window was open. Fist steered it into the bedroom. There was a single figure, asleep on one side of a double bed.