Eye for an eye, ’stache for a ’stache.
He shook his head. That would only make sense if the man was being punished for sewing someone else’s mouth shut with a mustache. As William pondered this, Henderson exclaimed, “SYNERGY!” like an old-time gold prospector crying out “EUREKA!”
Old Testament vengeance was a bit of an overreaction, but William really did wish the guy would shut up.
And then, without warning, Autonomous drove itself forward. Raef Henderson went down, and the car rolled over his leg.
“Holy shit.”
Christina Hernandez leaned forward in the ergonomic chair she’d taken from Upstairs and carefully sanitized from the headrest down to the wheels. Her face was bathed in the glow of three massive Nerv monitors: one directly in front of her, the other two angled, like a trifold mirror in a dressing room.
Christina’s hand went to the top of her head, and her fingers parted tufts of close-cropped dark hair. She pulled away before she started scratching and wiped her hand on a dish towel hanging from the desk drawer’s handle. Then she tossed the used towel into the hamper next to the desk, retrieved a clean one from the drawer, and draped it over the handle.
Meanwhile her two guests—William’s best friend, Daniel Benson, and Daniel’s girlfriend, Melissa Faber—crowded around, leaning over her shoulder. Melissa smelled like lavender, as if she’d just stepped out of a long, luxurious bath. Daniel smelled like Old Spice.
They’d been hanging out in the CB Lounge for twenty-seven hours, ever since William and the other semifinalists had placed their hands against Autonomous to signal the start of the Driverless Derby.
The CB Lounge was what William called Christina’s Basement, which was also Christina’s Bedroom. A common area held a refrigerator, an old living-room couch, and a battered armchair, refugees from Upstairs. There was an uncarpeted nook for the washer and dryer. Next to the nook was a tiny toilet-and-sink bathroom (Christina still had to venture Upstairs for showers) and the door to her bedroom. On the wall between the bathroom and bedroom, William had painted a velvet rope, like you might see outside a nightclub. The painted rope looked like a giant Twizzler.
The basement had its own entrance, so she could come and go without wading through the tragedy of thrift-store junk and old newspapers piled throughout the Hernandez house. An antique wooden sign that said BLESS THIS MESS hung on an Upstairs wall—as if her parents’ hoard was nothing more than a hilarious inconvenience—but these days the sign was obscured by a mountain of old clothes and Christmas ornaments.
Christina’s bedroom was small and austere. There was a twin bed against one wall and a love seat across from it and absolutely nothing on the spotless carpet. A stranger who wandered in might assume it housed a nun. Clutter was simply out of the question. Severe neatness was the bulwark against an incursion by Upstairs. The idea of her parents’ stuff trickling down to encroach upon her space gave her hives.
Melissa set her glass of fizzy sugar-free Red Bull down on the desk. Christina picked it up, wiped the ring of condensation with the dish towel, and set the glass on a coaster.
Who pours Red Bull into a glass?
Between the bed and the love seat was Christina’s desk, where they were all three huddled. The desk sheltered her computer, a custom-built system with a fearsome array of homebrew hardware, all of it powered by ten Ibex chips, each with a teraflop of processing power.
Christina’s computer could perform ten trillion operations per second.
It had taken her almost eighteen months of dark web transactions to be able to afford the Ibexes. Christina told William that she’d paid for them in Bitcoin. She’d actually used an untraceable cryptocurrency that was much less mainstream than Bitcoin, but she didn’t feel like explaining all that. So she just called it Bitcoin.
The cryptocurrency she used didn’t have a name. Her computer, however, did: Kimberly.
Using Kimberly to monitor the Driverless Derby and do normal-person internet stuff was like teaching a rhinoceros to open a door by nudging gently. The rhino was capable of doing it, but what it really wanted was to charge through and smash the door to splinters.
Christina knew it sounded crazy, but she could swear she heard her system sigh. Kimberly was begging to be unleashed.
“Personal space, guys,” Christina said, squirming in her chair. Her face was sandwiched between Melissa’s right breast and Daniel’s left shoulder. He’d been hitting the gym hard in anticipation of his freshman year at Princeton, and his muscley bulk made her feel queasy. Roughly 85 percent of his shirts were sleeveless.
“Your personal-space bubble isn’t very well defined,” Daniel said.
“It’s basically right where you are.”
Princeton’s basketball team was Division I. They’d recruited him, but it wasn’t like the Ivy League gave athletic scholarships, and Princeton wasn’t exactly a powerhouse. Recruiting was basically like, Hey, kid, want to shoot some hoops while you’re here? Christina didn’t understand why any of his maniacal workouts were necessary, but what did she know? She’d spent the entire summer in this ergonomic office chair with thick curtains blacking out the two small bedroom windows.
Right now, those curtains were open. Midday light threw bright shapes along the carpet. It was 12:04 in their hometown of Fremont Hills, New York (motto: You Can Walk to Canada from Here).
Daniel pointed at the central screen, where the livestream was unfolding. “This is really happening, right?”
The drone’s-eye view gave them a perfect aerial vantage point as Autonomous crept forward. The #SweatyNormcore guy was flat on his back. A pair of EMTs attended to him. Driverless security guards shored up portable barriers as spectators strained to get a better look. There were so many phones being held in the air, jockeying for the perfect shot, that the whole scene reminded Christina of an Act of Benevolence, when coins were bestowed upon a big group of avatars all at once and sparks rippled across the crowd.
She shrugged. “We have no way
