"Ittle Bitty Bigger World: Spammed":

FICTION FICTION FICTION

After a long half hour of enjoying the skyline of the mountains from my (in the "rented for an hour" sense) viewing room at the 120th level, I reluctantly did something I hate doing.

I opened my message folder.

A convention has grown up that allowing oneself to be bombarded in real time by hundreds if not thousands of messages from a variety of human and automated sources is a recipe for madness. I've been using smartware for thirty years, fifty if you count the ancient technologies of text messaging and E-mail.

It still sucks. I have very good routing smartware; it is only very rarely that a message interrupts my daily wandering, and those messages are either 1) from a human or 2) life safety related, but not quite to the level of what we still call a "dispatch."

That just means that everyone's URGENT OMG READ NOW text messages are converted to ordinary priority messages and have to be waded through.

I have several hundred messages pending from this morning's jaunt through the forest. Three of them are from humans and my ware has decided that they merit prompt attention. The judge, thanking me for my assistance. I've learned the hard way that _anything_ from a judge needs to carry a priority, even if it was merely autogenerated by secretary software. The detective on the case, thanking me for my assistance again and stating that he did not need a statement, as my contact with the suspect prior to arrest was brief, unknowing, and not investigatory in nature. The State Parks ranger on the case, who... hmm...

"Legal analysis," I muttered and my legal ware sorted the letter. "Reckless endangerment" ... "wanton destruction of precious and irreplaceable natural resources" ... "inappropriately aggressive approach to attempting to salvage a non-viable patient."

OK, now I'm pissed. I wrote a brief note back to him, CCing his boss, the head of the forest, the EMS duty chief for the sector, the trauma physician on the patient's case, the detective _and_ the Judge. For good measure, I CC'd my reserve ranger supervisor, paramedic preceptor and legal for State Parks.

"Sir, thank you for your feedback. I look forward to the opportunity to defend my actions, since you seem to think they require defense, in any forum in which you care to pursue this matter. I am admittedly old-fashioned in my belief that human life is sacred, certainly to be valued over eight second-growth trees less than two centuries old. I authorize the parties to this letter to access my records of this matter, with the caveat that this is still an active homicide investigation. Yours very truly, Sergeant Anderson CSAR-5, EMT-P license number, etc and so on."

The rest of the related messages were evenly divided, according to my analytics, between "Good job, bro, sorry it didn't work out" and "WTF is wrong with you, you nihilist vandal humanocentric thuggee?" Reflecting the politics of the times. As none of them were from anyone interesting, except a few emergency services buddies, I disregarded.

Nine messages about the kid in the corridor. One from the kid. Amazingly, the smartware did not flag it with any obscenity. Curious, I opened it - video.

"Sir, I'm sorry I threatened you. I realize that I was in the wrong. I had to send this message for school, Gramps, so I have to ask you a question too. Did people really shoot each other back in the old days? Hoping you answer. Hoping I see you in the corridors again."

Very interesting. I opened the messages. Two from anti-graffiti groups praising me, three from pro-graffiti individuals (those all flagged for profanity), two automated from the justice system saying he'd pled out for community service and thereby avoided a civil intelligence hearing, and one from a teacher, flat text.

"Mr. Anderson, I would appreciate it if you could take the time to answer Timmy's message to you. He is increasingly anti-social, is a state ward with no immediate family, and I am concerned that his acting-out behaviors will lead to increased isolation and involvement in more serious crime. I realize you must be very busy, but I am grasping at straws here. Thanks."

I flagged Timmy's message and hers, sending a generic "Thank you, read, will be answered soon" - which is something I almost never do. Most messages to me go THUD into my long-term archive with neither acknowledgement nor reply. I set my smartware to remind me to answer tonight.

My financial advisor had an urgent message. Again. So I called him on direct.

"Mr. Anderson, Mr. Perkins is not available to take your call right now."

"Software or human," I asked rudely. She de-rezzed, which meant software.

"Message to Mr. Perkins, _you_ said urgent. You want my business, you take my calls when they are at your request. Ten seconds."

Just as I was about to hang up, Perkins connected, full of absolutely fake good cheer. "Mr. Anderson, so good to hear from you!"

"You messaged at urgent priority. Three times. What do you need?"

"One moment please." He was obviously pulling up my file, and social courtesy required me to pause to allow him to do so. "We have an _extraordinary_ investment opportunity, and I felt you would want to get in on the ground floor. San San Arcology is expanding in San Luis Obispo district. Ocean views."

Slow burn. "Mr. Perkins, please be so good as to read the notes for my investment file. I'll wait."

"OK," he said, puzzled. Then he came back on.

"So sorry to disturb you, Mr. Anderson, but this really is a ..."

I can't believe this. He's going to _pitch_ me?

I'm going to toss him. We're done here.

"Congratulations, Mr. Perkins, you have just managed to do what three of the Big Six accounting firms have managed to do in the last twenty years."

"What, sir?"

"_Lose_ _my_ _business_. There is no need for either of us to communicate again. Autoblock, autojunk, anti-harassment filter, DISCONNECT."

His mouth was still open to protest as the call disconnected. I called my lawyer's office. His approach to business is a compromise between courtesy and larceny. Routine matters handled by E-mail are cheapest. Messaging is more expensive. Personal calls are billed at prices you wouldn't believe. So I called him.

His software greeted me warmly, thanked me for my patronage, stated that he had been notified and was reviewing his notes, and that he would be available in five minutes. Incoming call chimed on the dot.

"Mr. Anderson, what can I do for you today?"

"I'm firing Decrepit and Touchy for spamming. Please transfer my portfolio to another management firm. Advise me at your leisure on whether a breach of contract suit or a social media campaign would be more effective in damaging them for their breach of trust."

My lawyer has a standing permission to review my messaging, calls and video feed. It saves time and effort. He said he would call me back in half an hour.

About eight minutes later, my smartware phone rang on Caller ID Block- Max Priority. Impressive trick. Between the fact I actually use my privacy settings, I've been doing this for decades, and my various reserve statuses, forcing a ring through without identifying the caller is curious enough to pick up for sheer novelty value.

"Hello," I said unencouragingly.

"We would like to meet you this afternoon at the Federal Building in San Jose. The matter is confidential and urgent."

"OK. Not to be rude, but what's in it for me?"

Federal Building meant exactly that, the Feds, whose role in just about everything had diminished since the Treaty of Cairo and the slow slide into irrelevance of national governments generally. I'm still old enough to remember armies and when passports meant something other than residency rights. I also have a soft spot for the old Constitution.

"Saving lots of lives. The front desk will direct you." Click.

They knew where my buttons were located, that's for sure.

Now that was the most interesting thing to happen to me _all year_. So it was a tad anticlimactic when I got another max priority call, which CID'd -- not thanks to the caller, but due to security software -- to Decrepit and Touchy's corporate operations.

I took it live with a caller-recorded message and facebot of a bland personal assistant, the kind of screening a mid-range executive might use. Except I spoke the voice, with a changer in the loop to make it sound computerish.

"You've reached Mr Anderson. How can he help you today?"

"I'm Josh Edwards, managing partner of [Decrepit and Touchy]. I need to speak to Mr. Anderson about an important business matter. Software or human?"

"Human, you colossal jackass." I de-rezzed the facebot and voice changer. "I've already consulted counsel about suing for breach of contract and spamming. You are edging towards a criminal harassment charge with fake Caller ID and spoofing to boot."

He turned pale. This was not the opening he was looking for. I continued.

"You may consider your apologies made and refused with prejudice. I paid your company a truly ridonculous amount of money to do two things: preserve my principal and leave me the fuck alone while doing it. The only apology I want from you is green and rustles. My charge for continuing this conversation, which is a binding contract I might add, is for your company to refund the entire last year of management fees. You're a managing partner, you are empowered to contract for your organization. One year refund in exchange for five minute conversation? Your call."

Arrogance won out. "Accepted. We truly value your business..." I let him drone on in this vein while listening attentively. Then I pounced.

"Not including third party, ads and autofiltered spam, your organization has solicited me over one hundred times in the last thirty days for 'business opportunities' despite a specific binding contract to never do exactly that. Mr. Perkins is only the latest in a chain of executive sales people who either can't or don't read. Every one of them thinks that he's the exception, that he's the rainmaker that will succeed where his peers -- all equally savvy, all equally diligent -- have failed. But Perkins went one further. Caught at it, all he could do is continue with his original pitch.

"That's not just rude or a breach of contract. That's _stupid_. Especially because I grew up in SLO, have consistently opposed arcology expansion in that area and even donated heavily to local anti-growth initiatives ... all of which is public record. So he was trying to pitch me on a project he should have known I disapproved of.

"Your organization keeps generating Perkinses and putting them in positions of authority where they can damage me and my money. So your organization has a problem and your services no longer have value to me." I kept an eye on the timer. "Coming up on five minutes. Anything further?"

"Do you really think you can go head to head with one of the largest accounting firms in North America?"

"Looks like we add you to the list. Obviously the answer is yes or you wouldn't be calling me on a high priority. I _own_ a percentage of SanSan Inc., the parent company for the San San Arcology, and you don't need binoculars to read the number of zeroes between the decimal point and the significant figure. I'm a wild card vote with no consortium memberships, proxies or allegiances on file. About three hundred days a year, I can forget it.

"Today, you made me remember. Today, your company yanked my chain over an amount of money I'd frankly donate on a whim. Not like it would diminish my principal. Back in the 30s, some very interesting people tried to bribe me with just about every perk there is. A couple other people tried negative bidding; one is dead and the other is a very happy kindergarten teacher in Fresno with little memory of his previous life. The one arrow in your organization's quiver is simply this. Keep your fucking word. And you shot that bolt."

"Mr. Anderson, we blew it. I get that. We mismanaged your account. Here is my counter... no, not a counter offer. Here's my commitment. First of all, I'm refunding the last five years of management fees. That's unilateral and binding. Second, I'd like to ask for thirty days. I will _personally_ manage your account. I will do my homework and I will meet our contract. If I can't win you back in thirty days, we part ways. But I will need to talk to you once a week, for at least ten minutes, otherwise I can't manage your account effectively."

OK, perhaps Decrepit and Touchy hired a competent partner somehow.

"Accepted on a trial basis, starting now. You call my attorney, play him this call, tell him I'm giving you a shot. You only, and you set up an appointment with my ware and you message or call with your Caller ID on and accurate. You talked the talk, I'd like to see you walk the walk." Disconnect.

I hate dealing with finances. Just hate it. The average person doesn't need to bother. The poor certainly don't. The rich do nothing else.


My smartware toned me out. "Life safety response, active suicidal, floor 160 of Quincy Tower."

"Itty Bitty Bigger World: Scrambled:"

My smartware toned me out. "Life safety response, active suicidal, floor 160 of Quincy Tower."

I sat up, spilled my drink and RAN for the door. Only with a quick snake of my arm did I manage to retrieve my backpack in time.

Out of service tags, qualifications, other trivia all go out the window for a life safety response. The San San arcology computers think that if something is not done, right now, someone's gonna die, right now.

The problem with towers is that elevators take time. Even if a qualified team happened to be within a minute of the capsule lobby, it would still take three minutes for them to get to the top. That's four minutes too late.

I'm here now. I threw myself flat in the empty elevator, facing up, and it surged straight upward at high G when it realized what I had done.

Ding. Rushing wind. Someone had breached the tower envelope. Neat trick.

And the active/suicidal was standing by the blown-out window ledge with a presumed smartgun pressed against his own skull. Nothing like platform redundancy.

The floor's police bot, a rudimentary older model, was prepared to instantly stun him -- at which point he would fall off the ledge.

I drew my smartgun from my backpack (it tamely howled in my smartware as it called EVERYONE EVERYWHERE) and pointed it at another human being.

He had started to point his own gun at me. Instead he hesitated and put it back to his own skull.

I smelled a rat. I subvocalized.

"Emergency traffic, armed flyer unit and anti-fall platform needed immediately. Correction active/homicidal repeat active/homicidal."

_Query_, correction? Acknowledge emergency traffic, units dispatched.

"Put it down or I shoot!" he shouted over the howl of the air escaping the building.

"You can jump or you can shoot yourself, but you may NOT take anyone else with you!" I replied, shouting over the noise as well.

Unbidden, a tactical graphic occupied the lower left of my visual field. The tower. An armada of flyer units were inbound, but the nearest armed CHP flyer would be there in three minutes. I could not select for details of armament, but a CHP flyer would be equipped with all the things. Which was good.

However, a Santa Clara County aerial fire platform showed ETA: TBD/15 meaning that in theory it would be there in 15 minutes, but in practice it had not yet been manned.

The graphic should have appeared the instant I was dispatched. Why did the graphic wait for... me to call for help. Oh shit.

I knew what direction I was going to have to take this one. My head hurt already. Timing was going to be critical.

"I mean it! Drop the gun or I die!"

He didn't mean it. He wanted a killing. He had something. Monofilament rappel rig, personal jump harness, allies on the tower exterior. I even looked for a rope around his ankle. Millimeter-wave radar from the building secware showed a harness all right, and a spool gun behind his back with sticky harpoons.

This was a trap. He was the bait. I was the target.

I stepped out of the elevator and it promptly fell at max speed.

I advanced on him holding a steady bead on his chest.

"STOP!" he screeched with a total change of intensity. Now he meant it.

So I did. CHP now two minutes out. Possibly several lifetimes.

Integrity schematic of the building indicated that he was not going to cause a structure collapse with his little toy gun. Or mine for that matter. So I side stepped to the rescue equipment locker to...

and stopped cold. Trap. Bait. Jaws.

The handle. Contact poison on the handle, IED on the door, harness rigged to fail.

I subvocalized for the police bot to scan the locker. It whined the electronic equivalent of "Right _now_ boss?" but spun as if to comply.

The tactical graphic did not update.

Wheels within wheels, traps within traps.

The thought saved my life as I threw myself around a corner... not from the man, but from the rigged bot as it detonated.

He took a piece in the chin but stood there with his heels on the blown-out window frame and blood running down his neck.

He leveled his gun at me. No more foreplay. I matched his move and shouted "WHY!?!" just before pressing the solenoid.

He actually stopped. Mexican standoff. Both of us were fast but neither of us could press a trigger before the other one would see it and press his.

"Orders," he said calmly.

"Whatever they're paying you, I'll double it!"

He actually laughed. "Double my cancer? You'll double my cancer?"

A CHP lifter came hovering into view behind him and I winced. This was going to hurt a LOT.

Sure enough, it did.

//

"Extra! On the spot with the zot! Reclusive tyco Anderson in daring duel with madman! Tower trouble! So the fun loving CHiPpies zapped them both!"

//

I woke up in the back of a CHP lifter. Not the first time. But it always sucks.

A trooper was encouraging me to vomit in a particular direction and "drink this," which I did.

My backpack was at his feet. I could tell by how the fabric lay that my smartgun was back inside it.

"Someone wants you dead," the trooper said quietly. You think?

I tested whether my smartware worked. It did - I was not in custody. So I pulled up a You Are Here graphic. Here was halfway to Vallejo Barracks.

"The tower's been evacuated. Lots of traps. You do realize the elevator nearly took you out, yeah?"

I recalled stepping out of the elevator just before it left. Apparently, according to the trooper, it had then accelerated straight down, under power, and taken out the elevator pit in the sub-basement with extreme prejudice.

"Software traps and IEDs, Bay Area Rescue Team is on scene investigating. Boiling hot water in the sprinkler systems, electrified floors, doors that try to close into people, carbon monoxide burner in the HVAC... it's like someone seriously screwed with the building smartware _and_ brought their own lethal hardware."

Sounded like fun, for values of haunted house from hell. Hundred and sixty floors of that would be a challenge even with full gear.

"We'll be at Vallejo soon. How are you feeling?"

I could see by the EMS sigil on his collar that he was also a paramedic. So I told him honestly.

"Yeah, you look like you've had a rough day. You may not want to take anything though unless you've got one heck of a snooper in your ware."

Definite point. My headache redoubled. Aspirin, or aspirin with cyanide?

I was going to have to start wearing gloves again. Many wealthy people did. Dammit.

The lifter landed, recognizably through the windows as at Vallejo Barracks, and we tromped (well, they tromped, I winced) in escort formation to a ready room. I had the dubious honor of being the escortee.

"Detail reporting with one, 1335 hours."

"Dismissed," the CHP Captain said easily as she eyed me up and down unfavorably. Tall, blonde, command presence, impeccable uniform, hawk eyes that narrowed when she saw the vomit on my tunic.

"Stunned not drunk, ma'am" I blurted.

She nodded coolly. Her augments clearly saw into the backpack; then her eyes twinkled and her smile turned little-girlish.

"You have a kitten bot?" she gushed.

"Yes ma'am." I subvocalized scratchily and the kitten bot leapt out, jumped up on a desk and arched its back for attention.

Everyone gets one bot. Otherwise we'd be overwhelmed with bots in public. Leasing your bot license to say, a media company is a way for even the poorest person to make some money over the basic stipend. The limit doesn't apply in private cubic of course, where you could have as many bots as you wanted.

The CHP Captain petted the bot for a while as it twitched, flicked an ear, and finally purred into putty. She knew how to pet a cat.

Suddenly, she was all business.

"Anderson, you have been in four incidents today. That may be a record. Explain?"

"I think the last was a set-up. Did the timeline open with my calling Emer?"

"Yes."

"Definitely a setup. I was paged Life Safety to active/suicidal about a minute prior."

"So someone may have hacked Dispatch. Lovely." And Dispatch was a CHP function, critical to the arcology's survival.

Of course, they could have hacked my ware. But if they'd hacked my ware, why had I been able to call out? For that matter, just blank my visual or goatse it just long enough for the bad guy to get his shot off?

Ware was supposed to be so unhackable that you could do things like direct neural interface with it safely. As an old fart, I'd always stuck with subvocalization and projection instead -- intrusive but not invasive.

"Need to follow this up RT, excuse me." And it was as though she had shut me out, become a blank wall. She definitely had direct neural inputs. She also trusted me enough to essentially go somewhere else and leave her body behind in my custody.

Yes, we were in a secure police building. That just meant dumb building ware and lots of bots.

She opened her eyes. "Your ware is solid. You were spoofed. Local HF transmission using override protocols. You may have been steered to that floor of that building by your search algorithm however, so you'd be in range of the rogue transmitter."

Spoofing was annoying, but no danger to the arcology.

Someone willing to rig a whole fracking tower to get one person definitely was.

The interrogation took about two hours, interspersed with kitten petting breaks. By the end of it, she knew slightly more about me than most of my past lovers, had a detailed rundown of my crazy day to date, how I felt about it -- and had slipped me two fast-acting analgesics from her own private stash.

What was a drug crime or two between new friends?

Captain Amy Tsien frowned and sighed.

"No one loves redwood trees that much. But so far the most credible of the groups trying to take credit for the Quincy Towers sabotage is the Terra Liberation Front." TLF was a bunch of crazy crackpots who genuinely believed that lowering the human population to a billion or so would solve all problems for the lucky survivors, and to hell with the other thirty billion and change.

Their idea of gradual population control was a capsule programming error at rush hour and a casualty count in the thousands.

She rubbed the kitten's belly as she continued.

"You are a high net worth individual but there are hundreds of thousands as wealthy as you in San San. Not worth kidnapping, barely worth killing for that matter. You've cast a lot of swing votes in stockholder elections and your clout score is damn high. But most of that is because you're invested in San San holdings rather than tied up directly in real estate. Your estate goes to a mix of charities -- including the 11-99 Foundation I see.

CHP's own charity.

"All solid long term performers. You've made a lot of enemies of the sneer-at-you-in-the-corridors sort, but no one really heavy. Hmmm. Did you know the tongs like you?"

I shuddered. "No."

"Organized Crime has a note that the tongs have been told if they have an issue with you, back way off and talk to some old man who lives in Corridor North and runs a hot dog stand, and he'll take care of it."

I knew exactly who she was referring to. I'd spent long hours taking philosophy with Bao over an amazing variety of "hot dogs" - but the only illegal thing I'd known he was into was procurement of exotic meats. You know, SPAM.

Interesting.