Asimov's Science Fiction: July 2013 (5 page)

A man of indeterminate ethnicity and race, Olala sported a massive crop of dreads. He'd twined bits of wire into the locks, giving him the look of a dark dandelion. Olala claimed some Native American and Romany blood, among numerous other strains. Today, as he often did, he wore filched coveralls bearing the logo of the mall's maintenance squad: useful camouf lage.

Olala waved hello to Bengt without taking his eyes off his funky old laptop's screen. "Make yourself at home, ligand. Catalytic helper molecule that you are. Bind onto my magnif icence. I got sorghum beer in the fridge."

Olala had picked up a learned style of discourse during his senior year at Brown with Bengt. He'd shown up, seemingly out of nowhere, and had somehow conned the university into letting him earn a BS degree in computer science during a single year, during which he'd redesigned the school's entire network for them. Olala's year of wonder had overlapped with Bengt's senior year, and the two of them had some wild times together. Bengt had always seemed to amuse his freewheeling friend.

Bengt popped the cap off an unlabeled bottle of homebrew and chugged. Tasty, but lacking some of its usual kick and savor. A patina of ghost f lavors from Lifter remained on his tongue, rendering common foodstuffs bland. "So Cammy and I went to Lifter last night," said Bengt. "I'm still a little twisted." "Good," said Olala. "That's what we like to see. Let me push you a little further. Look at this documentary about chix and shedders." He f lashed Bengt a sly smile. "Chicks and shredders? Like the skateboard scene?" "Way wrong, Dong Dong. The lobster industry. Chix are the youngsters, illegal to trap 'em. Shedders are the somewhat f lexible soft-shelled lobsters. They're a good catch at certain times. But how do you think the fishermen filter out the chix, huh?"

Knowing Olala's penchant for high-tech gadgets, Bengt ventured, "Underwater laser interferometry tape measures?"

"Ha! They use a simple slit! All size lobsters enter the alluring trap. But only bitty ones can squeeze out the slit. Self-selecting! An elegant hack!
Feast
your eyes on these images, you tasty dude. Let your mind roam."

Olala slider-slid the video backward and Bengt looked over his shoulder while it ran again. Why exactly was Olala showing him this?

Just to be saying something, Bengt asked, "So what happens if a lobster enters the trap at chix size, but then stays and eats so much bait it gets too fat to escape?"

"Tough titty, bro," said Olala. "It gets all
Hotel California
weepy. The consumer is trapped by greed." "If lobsters were smarter, it wouldn't work," said Bengt. Olala stared pityingly at his friend. "God, you're slow, Bengt. Free food? Big box? Hard to get out?"

The penny dropped. Dizzy from the idea, Bengt collapsed into one of Olala's ragged armchairs. "The Lifter people—you're saying they're like
lobstermen?
They want to
catch
Cammy and me?" "What it is," said Olala. "They took my brah Majek Wobble day before yesterday." "God—I think I heard this guy Churchill saying that name last night. I'm so dizzy from that dessert they gave me. Majek is, uh—"

"Reggae musician, mon. When I went to Lifter two days ago, I took Majek with me. I met him after one of his shows at a club this weekend. Smoking spliffs, talking Jah. I took him to Lifter. And he didn't get out." "What are you saying? They kidnapped him?" "When you saw
Churchill
at Lifter last night," said Olala, narrowing his eyes. "Was he putting on some type of performance?"

"He was singing," said Bengt. "He has this amazing reggae voice. Even though he's totally whitebread. But he, uh, yeah, he did say he learned from Majek Wobble."

"Here's how it went. I go to Lifter two days ago to show Majek a big time. We lie around in there all day eating and smoking ganja, they don't care. We have a triple helping of the radiant pudding, and then another and then another. Everyone pigging out and feeling wavy. And then the vibe gets very tight. The truck engine starts,
varoom.
People running for the exit door. They can't get out, hardly none of them. Majek Wobble was skinny, but now he's too fat. I'm fat too, but I—well, I know how to shed."

"You sloughed off an outer layer like a shedder lobster," said Bengt, not taking this very seriously.

"Don't smile, ligand. I want you uptight. Otherwise this show's no fun. Earlier this week Churchill was singing Vegas crooner, you know. Total shit. But now he swallowed up Majek Wobble and he can sing and talk Jamaican. Proof positive. Aha!"

Bengt was weary of this mind-game. He looked around Olala's cave and shook his head. "Cammy and I had a really fun time last night. It's been awhile since things went that well. And I was glad you'd sent me there. I felt like I had a friend. And now you have to start on this weird trip about Lifter being a trap. You're bumming me out."

"It's good if you're bummed. More interesting. But I've warned you, and you'll still have a chance when you go back." "What do you know about this tag in my ear, asshole?" Olala gave Bengt another of his signif icant smiles. "I assume you, ah, didn't pick out the gewgaw yourself? No? Well—maybe it's like when the lobstermen tag an especially juicy specimen. So they can spot him when he returns."

"I want it off!" said Bengt, yanking impatiently at the chartreuse disk. He saw spots and the pain made the room go dark. But he didn't let up. "Get some pliers and crush it, Olala!"

"Calmo,"
said Olala. "You want to be keeping that tag." He rooted through the rubbish at the edges of the room and returned with a craft-saw mounted onto the body of an electric drill. "I'll cut the earring-post for you."

A few minutes later, the garish tag lay on Olala's desk. Olala patched the really
quite tiny puncture in Bengt's ear with a scrap of tape. Relieved to be free, Bengt used his smart phone to photograph the earring from several angles. He fed the images into his web search tool. No matches.

"Shouldn't expect any," said Olala, shaking his head. "Not on the straight web. I happen to know there's a network-level filter routine to block out anything having to do with Lifter. A filter that's omnipresent malware in the Man's servers. But there
is
stuff about Lifter on the
Wiggleweb.
That's a jah-code encrypted Internet relay chat thing that me and my posse use. We're making, like, a documentary." "Nobody tells me anything." "You're a semiotics major, man. You're lower than chix. But you'll get your chance." "I need to go back to Lifter," said Bengt, brushing the teasing aside. He'd been suddenly sandbagged by a memory of the savory food. "Right now. For lunch. If I can find the place."

Olala gave him yet another odd, sly look. "Oh, you'll find it. But let me put an app on your phone. Why? Let's pretend that it predicts Lifter's locations based on feeds from HowSquare, WebWhere, UseeMEseeU, and ShotSpotter. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying it does."

"ShotSpotter?" said Bengt uncertainly. "Isn't that the software that cops use to pinpoint open-air gunfire?"

"Would make sense. If this app was in fact what I said it was. There's been some armed assaults against the Lifter truck lately. Tasty, tasty. People losing their heads. Next of kin, embittered friends—they're like:
Lifter stole my loved one!
The anger's building to a climax.
Who killed Majek Wobble?
I can see the posters, the benef it concert, the rabid midnight mob—" Olala trailed off, busy tweaking Bengt's phone. "I'm really not sure where you're at," said Bengt. "Skungy Olala in his filthy cave. Into his f laky, menacing head-trips. Where did Olala come from, anyway? What are his goals? Many questions. Here's your phone, ligand. Have a good time in the truck. Eat for hours and hours. And, dude, if you can—learn how to shed. It's a better ending if you do. Don't end up like Majek Wobble."

Utterly bewildered, Bengt pocketed his phone and his ear tag and left in a hurry, detouring through the mall proper to nosh on some free food-court samples. Maybe if he ate enough of that stuff he wouldn't need to go to Lifter.

But, as with Olala's beer, the tidbits of Popeye's fried chicken and Panda Express boneless ribs, usually so rewarding, failed to please. Nothing but Lifter food would do. Looking around the humdrum mall, Bengt realized that he really
did
think Olala was crazy. The Lifter truck was a soul-devouring lobster trap? Get out of here.

And okay—even if there was something sinister about the Lifter—Bengt was too sharp to trap. Why not go there, score another great meal, and get out of the place in time? He could do it.

Bengt studied the little disk of his ear tag. It was a comely object. A gift from the Lifter crew. The writing around its edge was indeed a bit like runes. Or maybe hieroglyphs. Pictograms. Would be interesting to work up a semiotic analysis of them, comparing the runes to cuneiform and to Linear B. A publishable paper in there, an entrée to grad school. That would be an answer to his job drought. Nestle into the bosom of Dame Academe.

But now, inescapably, his mind circled back to his one obsessive thought. His hunger. He pulled out his smart phone and fired up Olala's app. The app bleated, f lickered, and died—leaving the phone in such a screwed-up state that Bengt had to reboot it via the on/off switch. And now the phone's server was labeled Wiggleweb. And Olala's app still wasn't doing squat.

What-fucking-ever. How to find Lifter? The ear tag! It was glowing along one edge. Like a digital compass.

Bengt left the mall, holding the ear tag f lat in the palm of his hand, letting it lead him through the mazy streets of Boston. In half an hour he was back inside the Lifter truck, tucking into a massive meal. A gay banner across the crowded, bustling room read HARVEST FEST. Churchill and Barb were everywhere, Churchill singing all the while, heavy into his reggae.

When Bengt awoke from his first postprandial nap, he waddled over to the kitchen counter and asked Barb to set him up again. And again. And again.

The sand dab had begun to stink like low tide in the Gowanus Canal. During the afternoon-long vidding of the tutorial, the hot umbrella lights had reduced the fish to the consistency of cow snot. Cammy's thoughts ran, not for the first nor the last time, down a familiar groove: how nice life must've been, back in the old, stable, prepostmodern, un-fucked-up economy, where you punched a clock and got a weekly check for forty years of eight-hour days, two weeks of vacation every year, then a good pension. But no, she and her peers had been born into the zero-security, free entrepreneurial age of the Endless Hustle.

She wondered if the pro-tech cheerleader type bloggers ever had to confront a gloppy mound of fish guts in their daily rounds? Probably not. Would she ever reach such exalted heights? It seemed so improbable most days. Little Camila Delgado, CEO, CFO, COO, Forbes 400. Not gonna hold her breath! But at least she had her Big Papi Bengt, lovable whackjob, and they had a roof over their heads and food on the table—

Bengt? Food? Where was he anyhow? Getting dark, no call, no text. Could he have gone back to the Lifter truck on his own—summoned by the esoteric forces who'd made his ear tag, drawn in like a deer to a poisoned salt lick, a tiger to a steak-baited blind, a f ly to perfumed f lypaper?

Hastily shutting down her gear, Cammy whipped off a text to Bengt. Still no response. She tried a voice call. Nada. Her nerves started to thrum, like telephone pole guy-wires under hurricane assault. What appeals for help did Bengt's silence leave? Olala!

"Yeah, sure, he was here, Cam. Left hours ago. I hope he remembers to turn shed-der." "Shedder?" "Like a soft-shelled lobster. So he can squeeze out of the Lifter truck. It's basically a giant lobster trap. They fatten us up and when we can't get out, they ship us away." "Don't be so stoned and crazy, Olala. Help me find my husband."
"Seguro,
I'll give you an app to find the Lifter truck,
porque no?
I gave the same app to your
hombre.
Be sure and shoot a lot of video."

Olala's use of Spanish was a habit he fell into when talking to Cammy. Normally she didn't mind it, but now it pissed her off.
"Pendejo!
You deliberately sent Bengt into a death trap?"

"Sorry, ligand. Between a man and his destiny, I interpose my carcass not. No apologies, no blame. You want my search warez? Hold the phone for a squirt of jahjuice!"

Out on the streets, Cammy turned on Olala's app—but it seemed balky, pre-beta, of no value. The only visible effect was that it changed Cammy's service provider to Wiggleweb. Early adopters get the shaft!

Shaft? She saw a sudden mental image of Bengt on a skewer running up his butt and out his mouth, her husband roasting on the spit, his skin crackling, his rendered fat dribbling into a trough of seaweed layered over steamer clams, the trough wedged between granite stones amid a seaside fire whose f lames had already blackened Bengt's face and singed away his hair. His blank, boiled-solid eyes were milky white, and sinister reggae music was playing and—
No!

Something within Cammy rose up to replace Olala's seemingly useless app. A heartlink to Bengt, a gutlink to the living Lifter dessert pudding, a global positioning system using old-school
biological
cells. At every turning, Cammy followed her instinctual twitches and tics, her heart tugs and her intestinal rumblings.

Seven-thirty PM. Streetlights—those that remained unbroken on this mingy, deserted avenue—blipping on in automatic response to daylight's demise. And there, a block away, the Lifter truck! Hulking like something awkward and out of its native element—like a boxy stranded submarine or a downed suburb of the flying city of Laputa—the truck radiated a sexy/dangerous vibe. Its edges were smooth and gently curved, its cab was sleek and wind-faired. Cammy videoed it. Somehow the truck reminded her of a love-robot Sorayama gynoid pinup calendar that Bengt and his friends had greatly admired. Boyish Bengt and his little needs.

Quietly Cammy felt along the trailer for a glossy chrome entrance rectangle that would revolve like the pivoting haunted-house bookshelves of many an
Abbott and Costello Meet Karloff
epic. But today the seamless exterior of the truck stymied her efforts.