ASSAULT: $14.99
With each day that passed, our prospects dwindled, and without a paycheck, we would be in Collection before the month was out. My silence and notoriety made me impossible to employ. I couldn’t even try to earn pennies in a Free-to-Play game because I couldn’t agree to Terms of Service.
Trapped in the house, Saretha took to mining for gold and candy in one of these games. She made little hammering gestures in the air, and her avatar made the same tedious motion projected on the wall screen. If she didn’t get distracted, she could make about a three or four dollars an hour by selling what she gathered—but only if she could transport it safely to an in-game bank. Time and again, she was ambushed by players who paid for perks that made them nearly invincible. They thrilled in making players like Saretha miserable; they were unaware or unconcerned that the tiny sums of money they were stealing might ruin us.
“You’re just wasting time,” Sam told her, turning over in his bed. It was late. The dim glow of the twilight dome faded so it was lit pale by the city. Sam was tired. There was an ache in his voice.
Saretha tensed. Her half-open mouth closed into a tight, lipless frown. Some kind of half wolf/centaur smashed her character to the ground, and her gold and jellybeans scattered across the screen.
“Sam!” Saretha cried out, blaming him. Her Cuff buzzed. Sam shook his head. We both knew it cost Saretha more to say his name than she would have made from the loot. The half wolf/centaur turned and farted a noxious green cloud over her avatar’s body—a perk you could purchase in-game to taunt your enemies. It likely cost more than the loot as well.
“You should go to school,” Saretha said.
Sam looked puzzled. It was nearly eight o’clock at night. “Now?”
“In general,” Saretha said, flailing a hand around and letting out an exasperated breath. “Don’t make me waste words!”
Her Cuff buzzed. She meant I should go to school. I hadn’t been in days. After Nancee’s Last Day, I knew the pressure on me would only grow worse. Sera Croate would be waiting. Others would, too. I hoped Nancee was okay, and realized too late I should have gone to be with her.
“You probably should,” Sam encouraged in a small voice.
I almost said, Yeah, because speaking with Sam felt more familiar than my silence. But I stopped myself just in time. Still, he was right. It wasn’t good for Saretha and I to be cooped up together. I wasn’t helping her, and I doubt she understood how much I longed to help.
Still frowning, Saretha waited to respawn and scrolled through her Cuff at her friend count. She once broke two thousand followers. Now she was down to a couple dozen. She sighed. She tried to pull up her Huny® status, but it wouldn’t load. I hadn’t even thought about how her Branding might be affected. Had they dropped her?
“Crap,” Sam said realizing what this meant. Sam hated the taste of Wheatlock™. The Huny® spread was the only thing that made it palatable, probably because it had an actual flavor: sweet. Wheatlock™ tasted like the bottom of a shoe, but probably blander. “I guess we’ll have to ration our supplies.” He laughed, but he laughed alone. I didn’t find it funny; I found it sad. We wouldn’t have Huny® anymore.
A moment later, Saretha’s character was back on-screen, unarmed and tiny, headed to the mines. The half wolf/centaur charged, having stuck around to crush her again, just because he could. I couldn’t watch her do this anymore.
I left. I had to get out. I walked for a few hours, along to the far side of the rim where the shops gave way to small houses, greenery and then exclusive Law Firms, nightclubs and the enormous City Court House.
The imposing marble building made me uneasy. It’s one of the few in the city built from real stone, not printed layers of plastic. It is meant to intimidate. Obedience to the Law is Freedom™ is chiseled over the columned entrance, a hundred feet above me in letters twice my height. The Commander-in-Chief Justice adjudicates there when he isn’t ruling the Supreme Court™. I’d never been inside, and couldn’t imagine I ever would. Arkansas Holt would cave in to any Lawsuit before it got to court.
The streets were mostly empty this late at night. The buildings’ eaves were dotted with lights that overhung the street, nearly obscuring the dome above. Ads didn’t follow me into Section Fourteen; I was too poor. The dark and quiet felt peaceful, if a little eerie. I knew I looked horribly out of place. My gray public domain T-shirt and loose blue public domain jeans didn’t belong here, but I walked on with a tense resolve. I might as well walk the whole eleven miles around the city; I was nearly halfway. What did a few hours more matter?
I’d rarely been out here. Section Fourteen was the only part of the city with an English name, supposedly because the French word for it was too close to Quatrième.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move across a rooftop at the far side of the Court House Plaza. The Law Firms were closed and dark. Glum as I felt, I was thrilled by a glimpse of what I was sure was a Product Placer. I had never seen one before, even though Sam and I had been going up to our roof to look for them for years.
I followed to where the dark shape went. I waited, looking up, but there was nothing there. Someone called from behind me.
“Speth?” he said, as if he knew me.
I turned. It was no Product Placer. Walking up the sidewalk, followed by eager Ads, was an Affluent I did not recognize. He had a broad, flushed face, with a small, piggish nose and a thin goatee cut to a fine point beneath his chin. You could tell he’d been LaserShaved™. He was trim and fit, a good foot taller than me, with overlarge, muscled arms. He was dressed for the evening, with a formal black waistcoat and a platinum-rimmed Cuff poking out from his sleeve. The platinum ring was a thing for Affluents. It signaled intent and willingness to offer free speaks—a successful pickup technique. It was odd that he was alone; the city was full of young girls willing to trade their company for the ability to freely talk. Why bother me?
I pretended I hadn’t heard him and picked up my pace. He called my name again and jogged to catch up.
“You’re that Silent Girl, right?” His Cuff vibrated. He looked at it, as if thinking of holding it out to me, then he thought better of it. “What a shame. You have a lovely mouth.”
Charming, I thought. Sometimes it was nice to think words clearly in my head, even if I could not say them. He was not so ugly that he should have a hard time finding companionship, but something about him felt wrong. Maybe it was because he was standing too close. Or because he was twice my age, or even older. It could be difficult to gauge the age of an Affluent with all the options for cosmetic surgery and youth treatments.
An Ad strip at the corner of a building burst to life, bright blue and silent. Ads had to run silent from midnight to six in the good neighborhoods. A bottle of mouthwash popped up and spun, like it was desperate for him to drink it. Smelling his sour breath, I was a little desperate for him to drink it, too.
“I feel bad for you. It can’t be easy, not being able to speak. I’ll bet a lot of people think they can get you to talk. I saw that the Daily Spec™ will pay $15,000 for proof you can. I don’t need the money, of course.”
He pulled back his sleeve to make sure I could see the platinum ring. His eyes closed for a moment, and he swayed in place before steadying himself again. He had obviously been drinking. Across the narrow alley, between shops, another Ad strip popped to life. The mouthwash bottle hopped across and back. The systems must have scanned his breath. He leaned over me, his hand pressing flat on the Ad. Under the bad breath were wafts of cologne or perfumed liquor. He looked up and down the empty street.
“I sure wouldn’t mind though,” he said, “if you did make a sound.”
I held up my arm to press him back. My Cuff burst to life, sparkling with another mouthwash Ad. His face lit from below. His eyes rolled down to see, sharklike, making him look crazed. He knocked my Cuff away with his own, and then jammed his Cuff under my neck.
“Why don’t you cry for help?”
His Cuff vibrated against my throat as his words rolled out of sight under my chin—$15.94. I pushed at his shoulders, and when that failed to move him, I kneed him, hard, in the groin. He bent over with a groan, 99¢, but kept a grip on me and began pulling me into the alley.
My heart pounded like a rabbit’s. No one would hear us. No one would help me. I pushed out against him, but he pinned me to the wall with his arm across my neck. I kicked, and he choked me harder. A sound escaped—a slight gasp. He stopped a moment. His face lit with excitement. I felt his heartbeat under mine, less frenzied, but fast and relentless. My Cuff registered nothing.
I was not going to scream, or cry out, not for this monster. I clawed at him, desperate, swearing to myself I wouldn’t stay out this late again, if I could just get away.
Two men passed on the street, just a few feet from us. They pretended to be enraptured by Ads and walked quickly out of view, the mouthwash chasing happily after them.
“Silent Girl,” my attacker said, his face next to mine, his foul breath beginning to turn my stomach. “You won’t be able to tell anyone what happened, will you?”
Above us came a sound, a slight creak, and he looked up. I shoved him back, and his hold slipped enough for me to duck away. I turned fast to run, but suddenly he had hold of my leg, yanking on it, and I slammed to the ground face first. A jarring pain made my head swim. My chin felt like it had split open.
“I don’t actually want you to make a sound.” He laughed, climbing onto my back and pinning me facedown on the pavement. “That way, no one knows where you are, or what we’ve done.” He let the pressure up a little, but not enough for me to escape. “It will be a secret we can share.” He began fiddling with something on his clothes.
With panic, I realized there was no record of me. Only his words would be recorded. He could have been talking to himself, for all I could prove. Location is only logged when there is a transaction—when you speak, write or buy. Privacy Laws are few, but this was one of the big ones. I should have screamed so my location was known. I should have done something. I could have called out Police! and my Cuff would have autodialed the authorities and recorded this mess. Was my silence worth this?
“Sluk!” He grabbed my hair, yanked my head back and then toppled over, landing with a thud, like he had suddenly, forcefully, passed out. I didn’t understand what had happened. I dragged myself out from underneath him and slowly comprehended he had not fallen on his own.
A man stood over me, dressed entirely in black, like a ninja or a superhero from a movie. I rose slowly, a hand on my searing, bloodied chin. The man in black remained still, perhaps to keep from frightening me. Our eyes met, but that was all I could see of him. His face was masked, and I understood why: he was a Product Placer.
Banded® adhesive strips now have Anti-Scarsilate™! an Ad behind his head texted insistently. For nasty cuts and bruises, Anti-Scarsilate™ brings the healing. My chin was sure to scar, just as Saretha’s elbow had. The Ad showed instant healing, but below it, a disclaimer read Healing not instant—simulated for the purposes of demonstration. Anti-Scarsilate™ hadn’t helped Saretha lose the little crescent moon on her arm, even though she’d been sure it would. I doubted it would help me with this.
The Ad wasn’t for me, anyway. I didn’t rate. It was for my unconscious attacker on the ground.
The Product Placer stepped back. Keeping his eyes on me, he raised his Cuff arm up and swung it back, smashing into the Ad panel. The glow sputtered in a strange rainbow of color as shards of the screen fell away. He reached into the shattered panel and pulled out a thin, square chip, then crossed the alley to the other side. He seemed fairly pleased with himself. He repeated the process with the other Ad and handed the chip to me gently. I turned it over in my hands. It was branded and labeled Seagate™ 8PB Q-flash; a simple flash drive you could plug into most computers. Below this was a small, dot-printed label, which read: 24hrlp-3dscn-rs.
I was a little wobbly. At first I thought it meant something about twenty-four-hour help, but then I realized what the drive contained. It was the Ad panel’s backup loop of the last twenty-four hours of scan data and video. My attack, and my rescue, were on that little chip. It had been recorded and stored for upload and parsing.
As soon as I understood, the Product Placer snatched the chip back and tucked it away. He hadn’t meant it for me. He was taking it for himself. He wanted to erase any trace he had been in the alley. Product Placers can’t be seen, and they certainly don’t leave evidence behind if they can help it.
My attacker began to stir. The Product Placer bent down and pulled a small metallic-blue device shaped like a teardrop from his pack. It was no bigger than his thumb. He slid it over the man’s Cuff. The Cuff clicked and released from the man’s arm. My attacker moaned. I didn’t know a device existed that would allow you to remove another person’s Cuff.
The man screamed, raising his hands to his eyes. Disconnected from the Cuff, he had been shocked for his groan, and then was shocked again for the scream of pain. This time he winced, but held his tongue.
The Product Placer smiled under his mask and covered his eyes with his hands, then revealed them, like he was playing peekaboo. It was awfully shrewd to take the man’s Cuff. My attacker wouldn’t be able to report anything to the police until a new Cuff was assigned. That could take weeks, even with his wealth.
The Placer closed the man’s Cuff over a loop on his backpack. The platinum ring glinted in the dark. A second later, the Placer scrambled up a rope so thin and black, it almost looked like he was pantomiming his way up the side of the building.
“You—” My attacker tried to speak, blindly casting around, but even that single word was cut short by a hard wince as he held his hands to his eyes.
Acting more from instinct than good sense, I found the thin rope and scrambled up, away from my attacker. I never should have seen the Placer, but now that I had, I needed to know more.