forward.
The moving portion of the bookcases possessed a human silhouette. In the next second the silhouette went white, revealing a head-to-toe suit of proteopape. This suit, Bash realized, must represent one of the newest third- generation Parametrics camo outfits. The myriad moletronic cameras in the rear of the suit captured the exact textures and lighting of the background against which the wearer stood, and projected the mappings onto the front of the clothing. The wearer received his visual inputs on the interior of the hood from the forward array of cameras. Gauzy portions of the hood allowed easy breathing, at the spotty sacrifice of some of the disguise’s hi-res.
A hand came up to sweep the headgear backward, where it draped like a loose cowl on the individual’s back. The face thus revealed belonged to a young Hispanic man with a thin mustache.
“My name is Tito Harnnoy, and I represent the Masqueleros. We will help you, hombre!”
6
The Manchurian Candidate
Tito Harnnoy drove his battered industrial-model two-person Segway down Mass Ave toward Cambridge. Riding behind Harnnoy, Bash experienced a creeping nostalgia, not altogether pleasant, that grew stronger the closer they approached his old alma mater, MIT.
Although Bash, once he became rich, had given generously to his university, endowing entire buildings, scholarship funds, research programs and tenured positions, he had not returned physically to the campus since graduation. The university held too many memories of juvenile sadness and loneliness blended with his culminating triumph. Whenever Bash cast his thoughts back to those years, he became again to some degree the geeky prodigy, a person he felt he had since outgrown. His maturity always a tenuous proposition, Bash felt it wisest not to court such retrogressive feelings. But now, apparently, he had no choice but to confront his past self.
Harnnoy broke Bash’s reverie by saying, “Just a few smoots away from help, pard.”
Indeed, they were crossing the Charles River into Cambridge. The scattered structures of MIT loomed ahead, to east and west.
Bash noted extraordinary activity on the water below. “What’s happening down there?” he asked Harnnoy.
“Annual Dragon Boat Festival. Big Asian carnival today, pard.”
Harnnoy brought the scooter to a gyroscopic stop nearly below the shadow of the Great Dome and they dismounted. Walking into the embrace of the buildings that comprised the Infinite Corridor, they attained grassy Killian Court. The bucolic campus scene reflected the vibrant July day.
Several artists were “painting” the passing parade from various perspectives, employing smart styluses on canvases of proteopape. Depending on the applications the artists used, their strokes translated into digitized pastels or charcoal, acrylics or oils, ink or pencil or watercolor. Some had style filters in place, producing instant Monets or Seurats.
Elsewhere a kite-fighting contest was underway. Made of proteopape with an extra abundance of special MEMS, the kites could flex and flutter their surfaces and achieve dynamic, breeze-assisted flight. Tetherless, they were controlled by their handlers who employed sheets of conventional proteopape on the ground that ran various strategy programs and displayed the kites’-eye view. Curvetting and darting, the lifelike kites sought to batter aerial opponents and knock them from the sky without being disabled in turn.
Elsewhere, sedentary proteopape users read magazines or newspapers or books, watched various videofeeds, mailed correspondents, telefactored tourist autonomes around the globe, or performed any of a hundred other proteopape-mediated functions.
Conducting Bash through the quad and toward the towering Building 54, Harnnoy said, “I’m glad you decided to trust the Masqueleros, Applebrook. We won’t let you down. It’s a good thing we have our own ways of monitoring interesting emergent shit around town. We keep special feelers out for anything connected with your name, you know.”
Bash didn’t know. “But why?”
“Are you kidding? You’re famous on campus. The biggest kinasehead ever to emerge from these hallowed halls, even considering all the other famous names. And that’s no intronic string.”
Bash felt weird. Had he really become some kind of emblematic figure to this strange younger generation? The honor sat awkwardly on his shoulders.
“Well, that’s a major tribute, I guess. I only hope I can live up to your expectations.”
“Even if you never released anything beyond proteopape, you already have. That’s why we want to help you now. And it’s truly exonic that we managed to get a spy — me — into place for your meeting with the Dubsters. Those sugar-bags would never have lifted a pinky finger to aid you.”
Despite the worshipful talk, Bash still had his doubts about the utility and motives of the mysterious Masqueleros, but the intransigence of Cricket’s friends left him little choice. (Ms. Licklider herself, although expressing genuine sympathy, had had no solid aid of her own to offer.)
“I really appreciate your help, Tito. But I’m still a little unclear on how you guys hope to track Dagny down.”
“Cryonize your metabolism, pard. You’ll see in a minute.”
Descending a few stairs into an access well, they stopped at an innocuous basement door behind Building 54. A small square of proteopape was inset above the door handle. Harnnoy spit upon it.
“Wouldn’t the oils on your fingers have served as well?” Bash asked.
“Sure. But spitting is muy narcocorrido.”
“Oh.”
The invisible lab in the paper performed an instant DNA analysis on Harnnoy’s saliva, and the door swung open.
Inside the unlit windowless room, a flock of glowing floating heads awaited.
The faces on the heads were all famous ones: Marilyn Monroe, Stephen Hawking, Britney Spears (the teenage version, not the middle-aged spokesperson for OpiateBusters), President Winfrey, Freeman Dyson, Walt Whitman (the celebrations for his 200th birthday ten years ago had gained him renewed prominence), Woody Woodpecker, SpongeBob SquarePants, Bart Simpson’s son Homer Junior.
“Welcome to the lair of the Masqueleros,” ominously intoned a parti-faced Terminator.
Bash came to a dead stop, stunned for a moment, before he realized what he was seeing. Then he got angry.
“Okay, everybody off with the masks. We can’t have any proteopape around while we talk.”
Overhead fluorescents flicked on, and the crowd of conspirators wearing only the cowls of their camo suits stood revealed, the projected faces fading in luminescence to match the ambient light. One by one the Masqueleros doffed their headgear to reveal the grinning motley faces of teenagers of mixed heritage and gender. One member gathered up the disguises, including Harnnoy’s full suit, and stuffed the potentially treacherous proteopape into an insulated cabinet.
Briefly, Bash recapped his problem for the attentive students. They nodded knowingly, and finally one girl said, “So you need to discover this bint’s hiding place without alerting her to your presence. And since she effectively controls every piece of proteopape in the I2-verse, your only avenue of information is seemingly closed. But you haven’t reckoned with — the internet!”
“The internet!” fumed Bash. “Why don’t I just employ smoke signals or, or — the telegraph? The internet is dead as Xerox.”
A red-haired kid chimed in. “No latch, pard. Big swaths of the web are still in place, maintained by volunteers like us. We revere and cherish the kludgy old monster. The web’s virtual ecology is different now, true, more of a set of marginal biomes separated by areas of clear-cut devastation. But we still host thousands of webcams. And there’s no proteopape in the mix, it’s all antique silicon. So here’s what we do. We put a few agents out there searching, and I guarantee that in no time at all we spot your girlfriend.”
Sighing, Bash said, “She’s
