New Decameron Eighty-Nine: S.B. Divya (Patreon)

MACHINEHOOD

by S.B. Divya

30. All forms of intelligence have the right to exist without persecution or slavery.

31. No form of intelligence may own another.

32. If the local governance does not act in accordance with these rights, it is the right of an intelligence to act by any means necessary to secure them.

-- The Machinehood Manifesto, March 20, 2095

Welga stared at coffee the color of mud and contemplated the irony of the word smart. Near the end of her daily morning run, she always stopped for a cup of joe or espresso or qahwah -- depending on the part of the world, which happened to be Chennai, India, on this particular day.

"I asked for it black," she said.

The boxy aluminum vending-bot replied from its speaker, "Yes. This is black coffee."

A microdrone flew close to her face. She swatted it away. Her own swarm of tiny cameras stayed at a polite distance above her head. "It has milk in it."

"Yes, very little milk. This is black coffee."

She repressed the urge to kick the machine. What kind of idiot had designed this bot's coffee-making ability? Welga glanced up at the microcameras and said, "It's my thirty-fifth birthday, and I can't get a decent cup of coffee from this piece of shit."

Her fan base wasn't celebrity-sized, and most of them lived on the other side of the world, but someone could be watching. Maybe they'd recommend a better vendor for tomorrow's coffee. Swarms had been present in public spaces since her childhood, and she mostly ignored them as a part of life, but she wouldn't mind a little extra attention on her birthday. Between that and the day's high profile client, her tip jar ought to do well.

A voice called out from across the street, "Madam, come to my stall. I'll serve you correctly."

Welga turned. A gray-haired person stood behind a folding table and beckoned with their right hand, plastic bangles reflecting the cloud-diluted sun. Metal pots sat atop basic burners around them. Plastic sheets wrapped the stall on the three sides, and a fourth provided a sagging roof.

After two auto-trucks and a trike crammed with too many people drove by, Welga crossed the road. The vendor handed her a static cup filled with liquid as black their pupils.

Welga took an appreciative sip.

"That bot has a Zimro WAI. It's not meant to serve foreigners." They pronounced the acronym for Weak Artificial Intelligence like 'why,' the way most of the world did. People back home said 'way,' demonstrating the ongoing American disregard for everyone else.

"How can you tell I'm not Indian?" Welga asked. The mix of Russian and Mexican in her parentage usually made it hard for people to guess her origins.

The vendor tapped their temple with their middle finger. "I have a real brain. I pay attention." They lifted their chin toward the competition across the street. "That bot sees your brown skin and dark hair and thinks you're from Chennai. I see your nose and cheek shape. No gold jewelry, no pottu," they gestured to their brow, "so you must be foreign. Bots. WAIs." They made a spitting sound. "They work faster, but human is smarter."

Welga hid a smile behind her cup. Some jobs still belonged exclusively to people, but much of the world's workforce did little more than babysit bots while they did the real work. Artificial intelligences had dominated the labor force for decades. They had their limitations, though, like interpreting the meaning of black coffee.

"What are you cooking?" she asked the vendor.

"Vegetable sambar, tomato rasam, basmati rice...but it's not ready. Come back in one hour, and I will give you delicious food."

"Good cooking takes time," Welga agreed. She drained the rest of the coffee and returned the cup. "How much?"

"No charge." The vendor smiled, revealing teeth stained red from chewing betel nuts. "Wish you a happy birthday."

Welga laughed. "You do pay attention. I like that." She pressed her hands together the Indian way. "Thank you."

As she jogged toward the congested main road, she subvocalized to her personal WAI-based agent. "Por Qué, tip that vendor with double the average local cost for a cup of coffee. And add them to my list of possible slow-fast-food contributors."

A second later, her agent replied, "Transaction complete."

It sounded as if she stood beside Welga. In reality, the audio came from microscopic implants in Welga's ear. The first version of Por Qué had run on a palm-sized device that Welga got when she was seventeen years old. At the time, the name she gave her agent had provided some juvenile giggles. Still did sometimes, though not today.

Welga's mood turned sour as she finished her early morning run back to the hotel. Sweat and dust covered her body -- not a bad one at her age. She could still pass the MarSOC entrance physical -- she knew because she did the workout at least once a week. And yet her contract with Platinum Shield Services ended in three months. They wouldn't renew. They cared as much or more about youth and looks as fitness, and thirty-five qualified as middle-aged by their accounting. She could take a desk job like her boss, Ahmed Hassan, and organize the field teams, but sitting around in an office had never been her style.

Instead, she'd been squirreling away money for the past five years. Platinum paid well, and they provided that rarity of modern life: steady employment. It saved her from having to hustle for gigs like her father and brother. Her public tip jar stayed full, too, thanks to the high-profile nature of shield work. Her plan for Life, Part Two, was to take her passion for cooking and turn it into a business. She dreamt of funding a group of chefs who designed recipes intended to take time. Modern kitchens cooked fast for the owner's convenience, but the best food took hours to develop complex, rich flavors -- like her personal favorite, mango molé. Her chefs would improve their ability to compete with kitchens by speeding up their motions and stamina with pills. She would change the world by revolutionizing the way people cooked and ate. Or she would lose everything and have to start over. It wouldn't be the first time that had happened.

Gray clouds hung over the towering hives of humanity on either side of the street -- flats, as they called apartments in this part of the world, though the skyscrapers were anything but. The hotel, in contrast, had a classic colonial architecture. White columns and marble stairs led into the lobby. Welga sighed as the cool, climate-controlled interior surrounded her. The turf floor gave her steps an extra spring. Jasmine and other flowers she couldn't name trailed from hanging pots, their scents forming a heady perfume.

Her room sat on the fifth floor and looked over a sprawling network of swimming pools. A kitchen unit lined one wall, opposite the bed. Their client, Briella Jackson, one of the biggest pill funders in the world, could handle the expense. If only Welga weren't training her replacement, this would have been a fun, easy assignment. Instead, Platinum had stuck her with babysitting some basic named Jady Ammanuel. The new recruit had arrived the previous night, but she hadn't met them yet.

She stepped into the shower and scanned the feeds in her visual field. Connor Troit, her partner in more ways than one, stood guard outside their client's door, white leathers against pale skin. Her father's feed showed him accompanying a type of bot she didn't recognize, no doubt on their way to some gig. Her brother, sister-in-law, and niece were in their Chennai flat, not far from the hotel. Those feeds came from cameras embedded in the walls rather than the ubiquitous microdrones. Local Indian culture preferred modesty and kept swarms out of the home.

Welga shrank the views of her loved ones and expanded the top ranking news video. A minder-bot named Mojo interacted with a round-cheeked little boy. Its charge was a miniscule force of intellect, zooming from one question to the next. The bot kept up with him and answered everything. It had no face, wheels in place of legs, and its arms existed only to remove small children from trouble, but the voice that issued from its speaker held a warm human tone of affection and exasperation.

"WORLD'S FIRST EMERGENT AI" blared the caption, followed by, "IS IT REAL?"

Of course not. Another fake, an illusion perpetrated by some machine's rights group to advance their cause. See this nurturing, understanding minder. See how human-like it is in its interactions with this child. The age of weak artificial intelligence is an end! WAIs and bots are equal to people. They would pick the most innocent-seeming machine they could find to illustrate their point. But a recording meant nothing. Who corroborated it? Who designed and funded the bot? As Welga watched, the video's reliability rating trended down, marked by curators whose own expert ratings had been verified. Another video replaced it in the top position.

Welga flicked the news stream away, annoyed by the two minutes she had wasted on it. She scanned the latest clothing designs as she dried her hair. Briella Jackson had impeccable fashion sense and expected no less from anyone who stood beside her. Welga couldn't afford the best so she settled for a mid-level outfit from a designer in Peru. It ought to earn its cost in tips, at least: black leggings, red mini-skirt, a jacket with glowing pinstripes. Thigh-high black boots completed it. While her basic tunic and pants remade themselves, Welga grabbed her makeup bottle. 

"Por Qué, let's go dramatic today."

"Would you like the most popular choice or the most recent?"

"Recent."

Por Qué would filter the options for her facial structure, skin tone, and budget. What would a strong-AI do differently in its place? Counsel her against the choice? Recognize the flair that Briella Jackson's personality required? Her agent had improved in capability over the years, but she would never take initiative like a human being.

"It's ready," Por Qué announced.

Welga closed her eyes, relaxed her lips, and sprayed her face. By the time she finished putting her hair in a dancer's bun, the makeup had colored and set. She dressed, then launched a small swarm of microcameras and examined herself from every angle.

Last night's sleep drug had banished any shadows under her eyes, and a microbial cocktail had restored her complexion. Welga nodded in satisfaction. A handful of admirers agreed by giving her feed a thumbs-up. One threw small coin in her tip jar. She ignored the inevitable unwanted advice from a sixty year old man in Kentucky about "covering up" to save her soul.

"You need to be at the prep room in three minutes," Por Qué said.

Timelines scrolled along the right side of Welga's visual. She expanded the feeds of her teammates. Connor still stood guard. Ahmed Hassan slouched behind a desk, as usual, in a boring, dark-colored suit that matched his full beard. Their fifty-something bear of a boss conducted their briefings and rode virtual on their missions from his office in San Francisco. Briella Jackson sat in her vast suite alone, immersed in a flow trance. She wore a pale gray suit, tailored to fit her long legs, with a red silk scarf tucked into the neck. Jady Ammanuel waited in the prep room wearing a black fitted jacket and pants with yellow piping. Their tight curls matched the bright color.

Welga crossed the hallway and through the door into the prep room. The day before, she and Connor reprogrammed the room's smart-metal bed frame into a cabinet, table, and three chairs. A mattress made of static foam rested vertically against the window. Gear lay ready on every surface.

Ammanuel stood and extended a hand. "Sergeant Ramírez, it's an honor."

She'd looked up Ammanuel's record during her door duty the prior day: Twenty-four years old. Ethiopian, German, and Vietnamese ancestry. Non-binary terms of address. Served one tour of duty in Central America. Like Welga, Jady Ammanuel had been a Raider for the US Marines with a specialization in Advanced Technology and Intelligence. As part of her ATAI training, Welga had received cutting-edge implants for audio, visual, and network interfaces. She had more electronics in her body than most people in the world, but Ammanuel had better. They had the advantage of newer technology -- more sensors to monitor their body's responses, faster feedback mechanisms to control the effects of pills.

I'm obsolete in every way. Welga swallowed the bitter thought and shook Ammanuel's hand. None of this was their fault. "I'm a civilian now. You can drop the rank."

"Third woman to get into MarSOC. You're a legend to some of us. You set the bar high for every Raider."

"Thank you."

"So why'd you quit?" Dark eyes met her own, utterly without guile.

Welga did the math on Ammanuel's age. The operation in Marrakech happened in early 2089. They would've been seventeen years old and paying little attention to politics or world news. It had taken a year for the truth to emerge: that the new President wanted to demonstrate his toughness, but he couldn't, not with the Caliph preaching peace and love. He needed to provoke a war with a pacifist so he sent the first American all-female Raider unit into a blackout area with an unreliable double agent as their intel source. He gave himself the perfect cover story in case the operation went wrong.

It might be an ambush, Captain John Andrews Travis had said at the time. But we know how to wade through the bullshit, and our Commander in Chief says go so that's what we're going to do. We're going to capture the target alive and unharmed because you don't inflict violence on a non-violent person. Those are our orders.

"You can watch it in the archives," she said.  

On her feed, Connor raised his eyebrows at her terse reply. He'd been there, riding virtual for the operation until her squad crossed into the blackout zone, and he'd had a front row seat for the aftermath.

Welga unclenched her fists. Jack Travis had been a mentor, almost a father, and he'd never talked down to his squad in spite of getting ripped by other men for leading a bunch of girls. "Captain and everyone else in my squad didn't make it out of there. I was in the rear -- and partly around a corner -- when those assholes blew themselves up. Eight people, on their side. They took out their own kids. Took out my squad, too."

Shock registered on Ammanuel's face. "They all died?"

"Yeah. We were in a blackout zone, no comms. Worse, they had EMDs, which deactivated our pills, radios, and bots. Not only did they know we were coming, they knew exactly what type of soldiers we were. Then the President had the nerve to call it an error in judgment. Not his, of course, but my Captain's."

After that, the President had pulled all combat personnel and sent bots to fight on the front lines. The Caliph disavowed the suicide squad. He never used violence against people, even then. She wanted to go back in with a different team -- smaller, less overtly military. They knew where he was. They could've gotten close to him, at least brought home the remains of her squad, but the President wanted war theatrics more.

Welga shook her head. "I lost my faith in god as a teenager, but that day, I lost faith in my government. I'll always be loyal to my Raiders, to my family, and to the people of America, but I won't fight for someone who doesn't stand up for their troops."

"You done, Ramírez?" Hassan asked on their team's audio channel.

"Yeah. Let's get to work." 

Welga expanded Connor and Hassan in her visual as their boss started the briefing. A list of names popped up in the center of her view.

"I'll make this quick since we're short on time," Hassan said. "We have two high-probability protest groups that have previously gone after other pill funders. The first is Purity Now, a machine rights group that thinks pill usage is diluting the human race. They usually attack with old, generic bots. The second is Death to Bots, a local construction union that likes to go after any high-profile target. They use whatever the hell they have. Salvage, typically. Everyone else shows a less than ten percent chance of approach. No registered exfactors in the area, either, except for some tower climbers."

"Sorry, what's an exfactor?" Ammanuel interjected.

"Someone trying to pull extreme stunts for tips," Welga said. "They have to register ahead of time or risk breaking the law. We don't want to hurt them, but they can cause real trouble. Being thrill-seekers, they're after viewers and tips, which means that they're more likely to get in our way. It's good you don't have to deal with any for your first assignment. The only time I've had to shoot a person was in my first year as a shield. An exfactor wanted to demonstrate a new juver they'd designed and made themself a target by firing at me. Turned out their juver didn't work."

"What happened?" Ammanuel asked. "Did they die?"

"No, we saved their ass," Hassan said. He'd been on point at the time, not a desk man. "Protesters, on the other hand, send bots in their place because they're cheap. If they're a well-funded cause, they'll use ones with exteriors that look normal but have guts made of smart-metal. Keep your weapons loaded with sticky-pellets and your bullets stowed."

"Is this typical?"

Welga almost laughed at Ammanuel's expression. When she'd started shield work, she'd been as naive about its realities.

"Yes. Human shields cost more, but we're good publicity for our clients," Hassan said. "When we get hurt, people feel bad about it, and they see our pain as a penalty for the client. We humanize them. Protesting is the art of agitating for your cause without causing real harm, which would be bad for the protester's reputations. They want attention and donations. We want to show that our client is only defending themself and feels the protester's pain."

"We don't ever shoot to kill, not protes, not exfactors," Welga said. "That would create a lousy image for our clients. The camera swarms catch everything, and the public -- barring a few sick exceptions -- doesn't like to watch real people die. We always carry basic field kits. Just because the protesters send bots doesn't mean we don't get injured. The audience likes to see us struggle. Makes it more exciting to watch. The primary thing to remember is that we aren't going into combat. We're performing a service, key word perform. We need to fight pretty, we need to destroy our attackers, we need to bleed -- a little -- and we need to keep the client clean. Oh, and remember to smile for the cameras. You get more tips that way." A reminder blinked in Welga's visual. "Go time on zips."

She fished her pill case out of her pocket. The rectangular box had worn down at the edges, but the initials S.M.B. were still clearly engraved on the metal cover. It had been a gift from Welga's grandfather to his wife, and Grandma had pressed it into Welga's hand when she moved to a nursing home.

"I'm done with candy," she'd said. "You use it for whatever you want."

Fifteen years later, it still smelled faintly of mints.

"Don't waste your time on that stuff," Hassan said. His basso rumble held the lilt of a smile. "Ammanuel has some gifts for you all, courtesy of Jackson's research team."

"You're putting us on experimental stuff?" Welga said.

"Not experimental. Cutting-edge. It's been tested."

Ammanuel shrugged and then loosed the grin playing around their lips. In their outstretched hand lay three white pills that looked like every other zip: spherical in shape, about four millimeters in diameter, no sugar coating.

"Twenty-five times increase in neuromuscular speed," they said. "With a ten minute onset and a one hour half life."

"Holy shit," said Connor and Welga at the same time.

Welga grabbed one.

"Troit, since you won't have a chance to calibrate to these, you're on bodyguard," Hassan said. "Ramírez, take point. Ammanuel, you're rear. Based on purchase patterns, intel says you're likely to get hit by retrofitted service bots at the Convention Center. Simple weaponry. Last year, Jackson was approached en route to private meetings. They left her alone for mealtimes and speaking appearances so you should be clear outside of transit times."

Not surprising. Crowded public spaces required far more care to avoid injuring bystanders. As Hassan continued the briefing, Welga pulled up the feeds from their ops center. Platinum Shield Services had people in rooms throughout this hotel and the Convention Center -- operators who'd checked in several nights before to avoid correlation with Jackson's arrival. Subterfuge in modern times was challenging, what with ubiquitous tiny flying cameras recording every move, but Platinum had plenty of security details working the Neurochemical Investors Conference. They used numbers and finances to their advantage. They didn't need secrecy.

Privacy had gone the way of the dodo during Welga's childhood. Some part of her always remembered the cameras. The Caliph's network blackout had unsettled her more than the potential for violence -- the lack of communication, the inability to see and hear what others were doing. It would take a million lifetimes to watch every minute of every public feed, but she had a sense of security knowing that she could look out for her people, and they'd do the same. Losing that had felt like walking around with one shoe: doable but not at all comfortable.

Hassan flicked Jackson's schedule into their visuals. It showed a private meeting halfway across town in an hour, then her keynote address at the conference, a short break, and more events. Their client had rented a room in the hotel adjacent to the convention center for rest and virtual meetings. The exterior arrival areas in both locations had broad driveways and plazas -- good places to attack if they weren't crowded. Hallways to and from her events could be trouble spots, too. She -- and they -- would be done for the day by five o'clock, at which point they could return to the hotel. A second pair of shields would take the night shift, a formality since protest groups rarely worked nights. Local viewers did most of the tipping, and people didn't tip while asleep.

"You'll need extra time to calibrate to these new zips," Hassan said. "Good luck and have a good time."

Welga pulled two different juvers from her case, a tiny pink square for superficial wounds and an oval brown one for internal bleeding. She swallowed them along with the new zip. She ignored the blue and green buffs. Those affected muscle strength and stamina, neither of which she'd needed much since her days in the service. Shield work required grace more than brute force.

Ten minutes later, her body buzzed. The designers swore that humans couldn't feel the effects of zips -- it wasn't like the mental high from chemical drugs or flow pills -- but Welga could tell when they hit. A sort of restless energy filled her limbs, like when she'd been sitting still for too long and needed to stretch.

Ammanuel shared a new training routine with her. They spent fifteen minutes going through a set of exercises specified by the pill's designers to help calibrate the microelectronics with their physiology. Ammanuel had faster reaction times by an average of one tenth of a second, according to her agent's measurements. She'd need to train longer to catch up to them.

"Calibration complete. Clear to proceed," Por Qué announced.

Welga checked their gear and motioned to Ammanuel to do the same. The items lay where she'd left them the night before, but she took no chances. She examined every piece before attaching it to her clothes. A swarm cartridge, electromagnetic disruptor, and 50-round magazines went on her chest and thighs. She put the two loaded sticky guns on her hips and slung a loop of smoke bombs across her chest. A dynamic blade tucked against her lower back. Close quarter combat didn't happen often, but when attackers came at them with hand weapons, they responded in style. Not only was it more fun, it played better for the viewers.

Ammanuel kitted out the same as her. Ammanuel's skin tone was a shade darker than Welga's medium-brown, and their hair was a brilliant yellow, but they made an almost matched pair in size: nearly six feet in height, broad shoulders, narrow hips.

"Remember, smoke bombs have to be authorized by the boss," she said. "And the EMD is mainly for show. Nobody in Platinum's history has had to use it, but the feeds like us to carry them. Makes us seem more badass than we already are." Welga smiled at the tension lines on Ammanuel's face. "Don't worry, basic! They always give you easy assignments at first."

Ammanuel snorted. "It's not the fighting that concerns me. It's the performance. I'm not used to putting on a show."

"Just act like you're sexy as hell."

"Who needs to act?" Ammanuel grinned.

"That's the spirit."

They went through their communications check as they walked to the elevator that accessed the upper stories. Encrypted channels went to each other and everyone on the assignment. The public feeds had picked up on their activity, too, and people spread the word that they were on the move. Welga waved at the swarm above them and nudged Ammanuel to do the same.

As the elevator doors closed, the car deployed its own privacy defenses. Any microdrone that didn't have hers or Ammanuel's signature fell to the floor, taken out by an equally small targeting device. The rest of the world had to wait until they returned to a less exclusive area.

They stepped out into a receiving room with glass-blown ornaments and life-sized statues of Hindu deities. Connor stood in front of an ornately-carved rosewood door. Their three camera swarms merged and swirled above their heads like gnats greeting long lost friends. Briella Jackson emerged, her expression blank and glazed under the influence of flow. She blinked rapidly, wiped at the air in front of her, and then focused on Welga.

Then, to Welga's astonishment, Jackson held out a manicured hand, shaking each of theirs in turn. Clients had no reason to acknowledge their presence and usually ignored their shields.

"Thank you for being here. You all look wonderful," Jackson said, measuring the pace of her words with care.

Is she on the same zip as us? As they walked her to the elevator, Jackson's strides picked up speed along with theirs. I'll be damned. That made two firsts for one of their clients. Made sense that a funder would want to advertise their product, but few did.

They exited the rear of the building. Tips began to trickle in from viewers as soon as they emerged. Sultry heat enveloped them like dragon-breath. They strode toward the car waiting at the curb.

The street teemed with people and vehicles. Some hauled laden baskets on their backs, others rode motorbikes. Trailer-bots and auto-trucks in primary colors blared coded horns as they navigated the crowd. Two stray brown cows twitched their tails as they lounged on the shoulder. A cylindrical, matte-gray bot rolled down the street toward them, its outline showing red in Welga's visual. The tag, "Opportunity For All," floated above it.

In the lead, Welga drew her weapon and shot it. The bot shattered. Its shards dissolved into a pile of blox on the street. They climbed into the car.

"That was easy." Ammanuel's voice sounded in Welga's ear and the words appeared in their team channel. Their lips, however, barely moved.

"The word you're looking for is boring," Welga countered. She subvocalized, too, so their chatter didn't distract their client. "Notice the low tips, for us and the group that sent the bot. That's why they're a low-ranking prote in spite of their message. Let's hope the others do better.".

"Better?" Ammanuel echoed. "You want them to hurt us?"

"A little, sure. They have to make this challenging or people won't care. The protes are doing this for attention, to get tips for their cause and keep agitating for change. We're expected to get tips, too. Almost a third of my shield income comes from the public. If they don't help us put on a good show, we all lose."

Jackson swallowed a flow after she buckled in. Her hands twitched, and her lips moved in silent communication. The car wove through traffic, priority horn blaring. Lesser vehicles and foot traffic gave way. Chill air blasted the interior. Goosebumps rose on Welga's skin as her sweat evaporated.

Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at the entry of a sprawling office complex. A solid metal gate swung open to let them in. The anachronism wouldn't stop Jackson's attackers. Welga craned her head against the one-way glass window. Three delivery drones flew over the gate. A fourth drone of the same size trailed them. The face of goddess Kali glared from its belly, her red tongue exposed, her chest decorated with a necklace of severed heads. That had to be the least original image to plaster on an attack drone. Por Qué tagged it as belonging to a local group called Death to Bots. Amateurs. Slogan text danced around it in Welga's visual: Humanity Before Bots; Power to the Proletariat; Pills Are Worse than Poverty!

Kali's face split as the belly opened and disgorged half a dozen cubical blox.

Anyone with a halfway decent agent had been forewarned of the incoming protest action and either left the area or tagged themselves to appear gray on a visual overlay. Injuring a marked non-participant would bring criminal charges, whether intentional or not, and the publicity of a protest made it easy to review camera feeds and pin the blame on protester or shield. Platinum would fire a sloppy shield faster than an exfactor racer on zips. Clients didn't like being associated with causing injury to anyone, but especially not to bystanders.

Their car stopped in the broad, circular driveway.

Welga sprung out, sticky gun in hand, and aimed at the drone. It landed on the ground with a satisfying crunch. Swarms of microdrones gathered above the area like a cloud of mosquitoes. Welga launched some extras of her own from the cartridge.

"Por Qué, maintain standard combat formation on my swarm views," she subvocalized. She couldn't rely on the public swarm feeds, which would follow the action that most interested them.

The cubes rebuilt themselves into mobile turrets, buying her and Ammanuel time to take cover. They used the two columns that held up the portico, Ammanuel behind one and Welga behind the other. Bullets were ineffectual against machines built from self-assembling blox. Sticky-pellets flew from their guns instead. They tore apart the turrets, wrapping the smart-metal with inert material. The shrapnel twitched and flopped on the ground like bloodless severed limbs.

The bots needed no such tricks against her organic body. Regular bullets flew at Welga, sending plaster flying from the column that shielded her. The protesters would pay for that damage. Idiots. Using cheap bot hardware would dig into their earnings.

Welga's muscles vibrated every time she darted out to fire at the turrets. A bullet grazed her arm. Another passed through her left side. She stumbled and recovered. The juvers in her system knitted her skin. The pills also did something internally so she wouldn't bleed out. She didn't care how so long as it kept her in the fight.

With each new wound, her tip jar increased. Each bot she took out earned her more, too. Connor never left his jar up during a fight -- he said he found it distracting -- but it gave Welga a fierce joy to watch the coin flow in.

She and Ammanuel shot through the final attack bot at the same time. Piles of writhing metal littered the driveway. Blood stained the white plaster columns. Cleaner bots emerged from a shed on the far side, deeming the danger over. Welga agreed.

"Clear to move the client," she subvocalized on the team channel.

Connor escorted Jackson through the doors. She and Ammanuel followed. As soon they registered the fight over, the offers flooded in: video editing, special effects packages, custom soundtracks. For an especially good fight, Welga would spend the coin to get her feeds turned into a coherent narrative. Not everyone had the time to watch live, and they would tip well for an entertaining product, but this one hadn't come close to being worth the cost.

"Ignore all," Welga subvocalized to Por Qué.

The building's WAI allowed them into the lobby and directed them to a room adjacent to Jackson's meeting. Connor stood guard in the hallway with three other shields. Welga expanded his and Jackson's feeds in her visual while sitting for her medical.

Two medic-bots and a human supervisor entered to examine them. Por Qué displayed the exchange of information with Welga's medic-bot. Welga skimmed it -- a request for delivery of her vital signals, which Por Qué provided -- then shifted her attention to her tips. Once a month, she transferred some coin to her parents' account. With Papa's health deteriorating, he had reduced his gigs. The extra money from Welga meant he could keep the house repaired against Phoenix's brutal sand storms.

The medic-bot clamped her arm and injected the usual come-down cocktail: a flush to dissolve any pill-based microelectronics, microbials to boost healing, and minerals to replace those she'd used up. It applied a local anesthetic around the bullet wound and used two of its arms to immobilize her torso.

"Please stay still," the medic-bot said in American accented English, having identified that as Welga's place of origin.

As the bot performed its surgery, she activated the audio on her private channel to Connor. "Remember, we have dinner tonight at my brother's," she subvocalized. "He wants to see me for my birthday. I'm told that Carma helped with the cake."

Her seven-year-old niece had a solid artistic streak, though her enthusiasm for sugary frosting led her to go a little overboard.

"Carma's the best," Connor said, "but I hope we aren't staying too late. We need time for tonight's birthday special."

"I wouldn't miss it." She grinned at the cameras above, both for him and for their fans who knew what his words meant.

Connor had adopted her family as his own soon after they'd become a couple. Her father said he liked quiet men, and Connor spent more time in his own head than anyone she knew. He bonded with her brother, Luis, over a mutual love for rocketry, and with Luis's wife over Indian food. Welga suspected that he kept a closer watch on their feeds than she did.

As the medic finished up her stitches, Welga nodded at Ammanuel, who sat for their own surgical repairs across the room. They had done well for their first time. Nothing worth lavish praise, but she'd be an asshole not to give them some acknowledgement. She called up their public tip jar. The balance hadn't shifted by much.

"Nicely done, basic," she said aloud. "We'll turn you into an expert-rated shield yet."

With enough time, Ammanuel would build a dedicated fan base, like hers and Connor's. Some of them might like to watch tonight's birthday rendezvous. People used to be ridiculously shy about their personal lives. Bodies did what they did. Her parents had made her cover up when they dragged her to Mass, and told her she'd understand when she was older, but that hadn't happened. Ironically, her parents' generation was the first to deploy camera swarms. They'd been in every public space since Welga could remember, and plenty of homes, too. Door thresholds couldn't catch every microcamera, and many people in Europe and North America didn't even bother with them. Besides, no one had time to watch every couple have sex. Hell, most people weren't worth watching. Shields, however, had to look good, and there was no sense wasting an opportunity to earn tips while having fun.  

"What do you have planned for tonight, cardo?" Welga subvocalized on their private channel. "Something worth deploying our full swarm?"

Connor raised his eyebrows suggestively in response.

Welga smiled and reached for the pitcher of water on the conference table beside her. A spasm rocked her arm. The entire pitcher tipped, sending water coursing over the edge and onto her lap.

"Godammit!"

Ammanuel raised an eyebrow before blanking on whatever they had on their visual. Connor narrowed his eyes.

"What was that?" he asked.

Welga attempted to brush the water from her pants. Smart-fabric dried fast, but too much liquid would fry its ability to transform. "Me being clumsy?"

He sent his next message via encrypted channel, in text: Bullshit. You're never clumsy. And your arm jerked. It's obvious in the top-down feed.

She sent her reply the same way: It's nothing.

And how do you know that, he wrote back. Tremors are a classic side-effect, and you're coming off a brand new, super-fast zip.

Zips don't have side-effects anymore, remember?

That's what the designers had said about flow, too. Those final days of her mother's life, watching Mama waste away, unable to swallow -- Welga shuddered at the memory. Her mother had died from flow, not zips, but worry gnawed at her.

"This is the fourth time you've had a muscle spasm correlated with post-pill usage in the past two weeks," Por Qué said.

Welga repressed a growl. She sent a reply to Connor. I have three months left on my contract. If it happens again after that, I'll publicize my data. In the meantime, I'm not wasting my coin on a specialist.

That's a long time to leave a pill-related symptom unreported. Connor's expression softened. His fingertips twitched as he generated more text. I haven't had to worry about you getting hurt in years. Don't make me start again.

Christ, his look reminded her of her father's in the weeks before Mama passed. His guilt-trip was a shitty tactic, but his concern was genuine. While she'd been with ATAI and MarSOC, he'd been at a CIA desk watching over her and her squad, helping them find targets, routes, and enemies. It couldn't have been easy.

Fine, I'll send it to Nithya, she conceded. She'll take a look for free, and if she thinks I need to take it seriously, then I'll go further.

Welga's sister-in-law designed juvers, not zips, but she was an expert-rated biogeneticist. Whether she'd give Welga any real input didn't matter as long as it kept Connor and Por Qué from nagging her.

"Por Qué, send my muscle spasm data to Nithya Balachandran," she subvocalized, "with a note that she can make it low priority."

People didn't get shitty side-effects from pills, not these days, not unless they went too cheap. Her team's supply came from highly-rated expert designs backed by deep-pocket funders like Briella Jackson. Her genome had tested compatible with zips, juvers, and buffs before she joined the Marines. She closed her eyes and remembered her mother's dying body covered in scarlet patches and weeping sores. Mama died of an early flow design, genetically incompatible and poorly tested, one of millions of cases that led to global riots and then new laws. Those regulations from the seventies required pills to be thoroughly tested before the designs could be sold. They also provided a pressure valve for violence by allowing protesters to advertise their causes by attacking funders directly, rather than going after police or private property.

Her tremors couldn't come from pills. Totally different symptoms from her mother's. Totally different enhancement, too. She knew what dying looked like, and this wasn't it.

************************************************

"Ah, coffee for the morning," he says. "Good. I've filled my pouch. And for supper, sambar, tomato rasam, basmati rice."

"Oh wow," Maya says, reaching for the filled container. "I loved the idea of her slow food thing. Not what people usually do in that sort of future at all. Though I'd guess she doesn't get to do it until the end of the book."

"I kept looking around looking for a plague cure," he says. "Still no luck. Great story though. Makes me really want to read the rest."

"No privacy at all, everything as entertainment," Maya says. She finishes the last of the rice. "I'm full now. One more story before sleep, right?"

"That's right," he says. "And what I brought down is another story from Ada Palmer."

"More of Perhaps the Stars?" Maya asks, hopefully.

He shakes his head. "No. It's a short piece called Library Advice."

"All right!" Maya takes it, and they read.