Existence

to pay off some repairs to their salvaged shorestead home and even take Xiao En on an early morning shopping expedition into the bustling city, where giant arcology pyramids loomed upward to block half the sky, proclaiming the greatness of the world’s new superpower.

Mei Ling had chosen this time because such a large portion of the planet’s population was watching proceedings at the Artifact Conference in America that she figured the streets would be largely empty. But it turned out that the event was in recess for several hours, which meant people were pouring outdoors to do important shopping or business, or get a little air. It made the boulevards especially crowded-and ideal for this kind of youth demonstration.

Slipping on the wraparound goggles, Mei Ling felt acutely aware of how long it had been since she and Xiang Bin moved out to the tidal flats and ruined shoreline of the Huangpu, where the world had only one “layer”-gritty, hardscrabble reality. That made her several tech-generations out of date. The ailectronics salesman had been helpful, patient… and a little too flirtatious… while tuning the unit to her rusty GIBAAR skills. It was difficult to rediscover the knack, even with his help. Like remembering how to walk after too long a convalescence in bed.

Gaze. Interest. Blink. Allocate Attention. Repeat.

The most basic way to vir, if you don’t have any of the other tools.

She had no fingernail tappers. No clickers and scrollers, planted in the teeth. No subvocal pickups, to read the half-spoken words shaped by throat and mouth. Not even an old-fashioned hand-keyboard or twiddler. And certainly none of the fancy-scary new cephalo sensors that would take commands straight off the brain. Without any of that, she had to make do-choosing from a range of menus and command icons that the spectacles created across the inner surface of both lenses, seeming to float in front of the real-life street scene.

By turning her gaze to look right at a search icon… and by actually being interested (which affected the dilation of her pupils and blood flow in the retina)… she caused that symbol to light up. There followed a well timed, one-two blink of the left eye then right…

On her third try, a new window-menu blossomed, allowing her to allocate her attention… to pick from a range of sub-options. And she chose one called Overlayers.

Immediately, the specs laid faint lines across the real world, bordering the pavement and curb, the fringe of each building and vendor stall-anything real that might become a dangerous obstacle or tripping hazard to a person walking about. Also outlined-the people and vehicles moving around her. Each now carried a slim aura. Especially those heading in her direction, which throbbed a little in the shade that was called collision-warning yellow.

These edge lines-clearly demarcated rims and boundaries of the real world-were inviolate. They weren’t supposed to change, no matter what level of vir-space you chose-it took a real hacker to mess with them.

As for the rest of visual reality, the textures, colors, and backgrounds? Well, there were a million ways to play with those, from covering all the building walls with jungle vines, to filling the world with imaginary water, like sunken Atlantis, to giving every passerby the skin tones of lizard-people from Mars. You name it, and some teenager or bored office worker or semiautonomous cre-ai-tivity drone must have already fashioned an overlay to bring that fantasy cosmos into being.

Mei Ling wasn’t trying for any of those realms-she didn’t know the addresses, for one thing, and had no interest in searching out ways to become immersed in someone else’s favorite mirage. Instead, she tried simply stepping up through the most basic levels, one at a time-first passing through the Public Safety layers, where children or the handicapped could view the world conveniently captioned in simple terms, with friendly risk-avoidance alerts and helpful hands, pointing toward the nearest sources of realtime help.

Then came useful tiers, where all the buildings and storefronts were marked with essential information about location, products, and accountability codes. Or you could zoom-magnify anything that caught your interest. On strata twelve through sixteen, everyone in sight wore basic nametags, or ID badges identifying their professions. Otherwise, reality was left quite bare.

Up at stratum thirty, it suddenly became hard to see, as the air filled with yellow and pink and green notecards-Post-its-that floated around every shop and street corner, conveying anything from meet-me memos to traffic curses to caustic commentaries on a restaurant’s cuisine. And prayers.

Mei Ling experimented by raising her hand and drawing in the air with a finger. As the specs followed her movements and responded, a brand-new Post-it appeared, bearing the name of her husband. Peng Xiang Bin. She then added characters that constituted an incantation for luck. When Mei Ling brought her hand down, the tiny virt fluttered away and seemed to fade into the maelstrom. This was what made stratum thirty almost useless for anything but prayer. Or curses. All visitors could see everything that was ever left there… which meant no one could see anything at all.

Do people really live like this all the time? Wading through the world, immersed in pretend things? She could see how this kind of tool would be useful on occasion. But she could take off the specs at any moment. What about those who got fitted with contaict lenses, or even the new eyeball implants? The very thought made her shudder.

At level forty, a lot of walls disappeared. Most of the buildings seemed to go transparent, or at least depict animated floorplans concocted from public records. These ranged from detailed inner views-of a nearby department store-with every display and mannequin appearing eager to perform, all the way to floors and offices that were blocked by barriers, in varied shades of gray, some of them with glowing locks. You could look inside-if you had some kind of key.

Strata fifty through one hundred were for advertising, and at one point Mei Ling quailed back, as all the normal dampers vanished. Messages and come-ons seemed to roar at her from every shop front and store awning. Blasts of sound rocked the spec-rims till they almost flew off her ears, and she had to concentrate hard just to blink her way out of there! Fortunately, most advir-levels were selective, even polite. Stratum ninety, for example, offered her discreet, personalized discounts on baby formula and inexpensive shoes, plus a special on a massage-makeover in that shop over there, at a price that seemed so reasonable, she could nearly afford it! The proprietor would even fetch a nanny-grandma in five minutes to watch the baby.

But no. Not with the sudden comfort of Xiang Bin’s paycheck so new and unaccustomed. Maybe another time.

Anyway, Mei Ling realized that she had been idly following the gaggle of youthful demonstrators, awkwardly picking her way across each avenue, while making sure that Xiao En’s bottle didn’t fall to the filthy sidewalk. A pedicab driver shouted and Mei Ling jumped back, heart pounding, especially on realizing-she had lost track of where she was, in an unfamiliar part of town.

It is not possible to get lost wearing specs, she reminded herself. Level ten would always provide a handy guide arrow, aiming you down the quickest path to anywhere in the world you wanted to go.

That is, if I knew where he was right now.

If he weren’t swallowed up by the secret intrigues of powerful men.

Continuing to scroll upward through slices of the world, she saw the level counter skip whole swathes of vir- spaces where she wasn’t allowed. You had to be a member of some affinity group to see those overlayers.

I recall that stratum two hundred and fifty was for street gossip.

Only instead, S-250 populated the boulevard with cartoon figures-colorful, high contrast versions of people walking by, with speech balloons floating above many of their heads. Some balloons were filled with written words. Others-nothing but gray static. Oh, yes. This layer is for eavesdropping, if people don’t care enough to set up a privacy block. The gossip level must have been S-350.

Mei Ling found she enjoyed this chance to recover her old knack of blink-navigation, even though the baby was starting to get crabby, and her shoulder bag full of purchases was heavy, and really, maybe it was time to set off for home.

At least she no longer had to ratchet through the layers linearly, one at a time, like a complete neo. A simple preference choice now let her view the virld as a three dimensional spiderweb of jump choices, stretching in all directions. It took just a look, a squint and wink to hop to the level she wanted, where-

– Post-its of another kind flurried about. Voice, text, and vid twips kept zooming in, attaching themselves to the youthful demonstrators, sent by anonymous bystanders, or even people who were