The Wellstone Read Online Free PDF Page B

ownership and operation of private fax gates within the exclusion zone was sharply restricted. Depending on the boys’ exact destination, their transportation options from here included bus (free), automotive taxi ($), horse-drawn (“hansom”) cab ($$), and of course walking, which according to the sign was strongly encouraged in a commercial preservation zone of Denver’s caliber.
    “Ooh,” one of the boys said, pretending to be impressed, and emphasizing the remark with the raised, limp hands of some supposed effete aristocracy. It was Yinebeb Fecre who did this, with an additional layer of irony he probably wasn’t aware of: by the standards of Camp Friendly, he
was
an effete aristocrat, the hyperactive child of two well-known television critics. Feck the Fairy.
    “Shut up,” Bascal told him mildly. “Denver’s raw. It’s good. You should be happy.”
    Conrad hadn’t seen the place except on TV, but overall he was inclined to agree. Back in his parents’ day, fax technology had hit urban areas like a saturation bombing campaign, rewriting their maps and landscapes overnight. Many cities became beehives of addressable spaces whose physical locations were all but irrelevant. Streets vanished; sidewalks vanished; neighborhoods vanished. In some cases the cities themselves vanished, or became hypothetical entities with outposts scattered all over the solar system. But Denver’s urban planners had seen it coming, and had drawn this cordon around the heart of the city to preserve it from the tyrannies of convenience. Not just a Children’s City, this, but an Urban Preservation District and member of the Living Museum Network. A place as classic and primal as the Fuck You Song, and twice as pretty.
    The terminal itself was underground, a dimly lit urban space filled with columns and information kiosks and snack bars, and old-fashioned telephones that were probably just for show. Another billboard—this one illuminated for some reason with tiny red dots—announced periods of planned outage in the fax gates here, and periods of broadband connection to some specific destination for some specific window of time: HONOLULU 21:15–21:17 TODAY. There were ranks of embossed numbers along the ceiling, although what purpose they served was not apparent.
    Some people carried luggage—an eccentricity in a world where fax machines could store any object in callable library routines and print copies on demand. There were other eccentricities apparent in the crowd: people who looked older or younger than the “ageless” standard of Queendom beauty. People who were dressed funny, people who had funny hair. And children of various ages, of course—comprising nearly ten percent of this crowd of dozens. The mix was interesting and cosmopolitan and yeah, highly raw. Fresh, original. Whatever. But everyone in the crowd—even the children—seemed to greet the arrival of fifteen unescorted, dirty-faced adolescents as a sign of trouble. A mother snatched up the hand of her toddler and pulled him close. Others were less overt, but their suspicion was lightly veiled at best.
    Welcome to Denver. Keep your hands where we can see them.
    Conrad gave back some dirty looks, and even snapped his teeth at a woman he caught staring at him. Gods, it wasn’t like people got away with crimes anymore; not when the whole Earth was one giant sensor. Even where events weren’t explicitly recorded in a wellstone matrix, they left quantum traces in the rocks or something. Ghosts. With enough patience and computing power, almost any event could be reconstructed.
    Ignoring the ill will around them, Bascal surveyed the chamber itself, and grinned. “I think we’ve arrived, men.”
    There was an escalator leading up to street level, and Ho Ng and Steve Grush, with hardly a glance at Bascal or any of the others, hopped onto it and went up. The prince, perhaps sensing a threat to his leadership, hopped onto the down escalator and called out, “Onward!