Outside his big window, it’s late summer, early morning, all kinda smoky. It’s a nice view; I’ll say that. Lawn, trees. The view is wired too. Whole place is full of VAO. Victim Activated Ordnance. To protect us rich old folks.
Once I saw this kid who’d climbed over the wall. He was just a kid. He probably just wanted to play on the grass. The camera saw him and zapped him. They used pulse sound on him. He clutched his head and tried to run, but his feet kept wobbling. Each bullet is 150 decibels and you can’t really think. He stumbled down onto his knees and he’d stand up, drop, stand up drop down again until they came for him.
I used to make that stuff. I used to make the software that recognises faces. Now it recognises me.
I go back and my room smells like a trashcan. It’s got grey hair in the corners. It pisses me off what I pay for this place. The least they could do is keep it clean. There’s got to be some advantages to being an old vegetable.
I push the buzzer and I get no answer. I push again, and nothing happens so I go to the screen and start shouting. I tell ’em straight up, “I push your buzzer and you don’t come, man. I could be dying of a heart attack up here. If I tell the papers, that’d blow your sales pitch. You don’t answer my buzzer, I scorch your ass!”
About 45 minutes later the Kid shows up moving real slow. He leans back against the wall, arms folded. I can’t even remember what fucked-up country he’s from, but I can read him. He’s got that mean, sour look you get when nobody gives a fuck so why should you.
I feel pretty pissed off myself. “Next time I ring the buzzer you fuckin show up.”
“Sorry, Sir.” Kid says ‘Sir’ like maybe it means Dog in his own language.
“What the fuck is up with you?”
“Nothing, Sir.”
I look for buttons to push. You know, like if someone blanks you out, you get them mad and maybe you find out what’s going on?
I insult the Kid. “Can’t you talk English?”
Nothing.
“It’s a helluva way to get a tip. Or no tip. You want no tip?”
His arms snap open like a spring lock, his head swivels like armed CCTV, and his mouth spouts garbage like a TV in translation. I pushed his button all right.
When he stops swearing in Albanian or Mongolian or whatever I finally hear him squawk. “I get no tip no how!”
So that’s it. He’s not getting his tips.
The assholes who run this place don’t pay the staff. You gotta give the nurses tips, the cleaners tips, the doctors tips, the waiters tips. If the toilets get more intelligent we’ll have to tip the toilets. And management makes sure you do it regular. That’s one of the things about this dump I hate the most. They keep sending you little forms to fill in to debit your bank account. Those fuckin forms show up on your computer, on your TV, on your microwave, on your specs. The forms have these horrible chirpy little voices. “I’m sure you want to express your appreciation for the staff.”
It costs 100 thousand a year to live here and they call the tips discretionary. That’s another hundred fifty a week. And I make sure I pay it because I want these bozos to motor if I get sick or something.
I keep my voice cool cause I want to make sure I got this right. “No tips? I pay your tips, man.”
I need this guy’s name. You cannot talk somebody down if you don’t know their name. My eyeglasses are running through all the photographs of staff, and finally I see him. I click a bit of my brain, like I’m going to ask him his name. The glasses tell me.
The Kid is called Joao and he’s from some part of Indonesia that speaks Portuguese.
“Joao?” I tell him. “I’m sorry. I am sorry. I pay. Really.”
He stands there swelling up and down like he’s pumping iron.
“Joao? I pay the tips. You don’t get them?”
Kid’s so mad his wires are crossed. He scowls and blinks.
“Lemme show you,” I say.
I try to ease him to the machine, you know, I just touch his arm, and he throws it off, like this. For a second I think he’s going to give me a Jersey kiss. So I keep my voice low and soft. “Hey, man, just be cool about it, OK. Lemme show you.”
So I open up my records. See? I show him all that debit. All those tips going out just as regular as spam. I point to the money, there on the screen. Right out of my bank account.
The Kid blinks and rubs his whole face with his hands. I begin to wonder if they teach people to read in the country he’s from.
Then suddenly he shouts. “I no get them!” He’s throwing up his hands and wiggling his cheeks. But I can see. Now he’s not mad at me.
I feel pretty sick myself, in my gut like my chicken was full of salmonella. I’m thinking, oh fuck. Oh fuck. We got ourselves a tips racket.
Somebody somewhere, probably one of the hotshot doctors who can’t pay for his new swimming pool or his lawsuit insurance is hacking out the cleaners’ tips.
I could complain, and I could call in the law. But. I got reasons. Know what I mean?
“How long you not been getting your tips?” I ask him.
He tells me. Months. I can see why he isn’t all that concerned about cleaning up my shit. I sit him down, pour him a whisky. This will take a while and I want him to know right in his balls who got him back his money. Me. Here. The Brewster.
I call up my contact. She’s top dope, a tough old babe still on the outside called Nikki. She’s got this great translation package. We have this audio conversation about her new bungalow which is a cover for a hack download. It comes in looking like a phone bill. It then runs a request from a nostalgia TV line. I load up and sit back and watch what looks like an old Britney Spears video.
It’s not a video, believe me. I can’t do anything that looks like a hack. The ordnance is always watching. They say it’s in case we get ill, but hey, why do they snoop our keystrokes? If you want to hack here, it’s a case of no hands. And everything has to look like something else.
I smile at the Kid and jerk my head at the cameras, glasses, TV, computer… all the surveillance. But hey, the Kid’s cool. He can’t speaka da English, but he gets what I’m doing. For the first time I get a smile out him. He chuckles and lifts up the whiskey glass. “Z24!” he says. Ah, that’s Kidtalk.
“Banging!” I say back. That’s my talk. “You’ve a Britney fan huh?”
The Kid’s sussed. He knows exactly what’s going on. “Britney… Whitney… all that old stuff.” He chuckles and nods and shakes his head. “I big big fan!” I know what’s he’s thinking. He’s thinking, this old guy is into some shit. He’s thinking, this old guy is hacking me back my tips.
The microwave pings like my dinner’s ready, only it’s not food that’s cooking. I put on my glasses, and then put the transcoder on top of them and suddenly Britney is translated into the Corporation’s accounts. But only if you are looking at ’em through my glasses.
I got a real good line on who’s been stealing a little bit of the Kid’s bandwidth.
My Medical Supervisor. Mr. trusted Dr. Curtis. So I siphon out the dosh and siphon it into the Kid’s corporate account. Ready for loading to his bank.
“Banging!” the Kid says.
Grand Dad House.
So then I call on Dr. Curtis. “You got a face like shit and your brains are all on your chin!”
Dr. Curtis leans back and looks like someone just been told a real bad joke. Behind him is a wall of screens, some of them showing people’s pumping insides.
You see, you get old, you end up in here and that gives them the right to monitor every last act and word. You’re a patient.
I’m one mad patient. “I may be 80 but I could still deck you!”
He leans back, with his eyebrows up and his eyes hooded. “I could always prescriptionize out all that aggressive testosterone. So unbecoming in the aged.”
I hate him. Really. I can take most people but if I could do Curtis an injury I would. Curtis has got hold of my pubic hair and can give it a twist whenever he wants.
