Afternoon is swapping shifts with evening, the market-stallers with the working girls, while the brief rain โ already half-way off to somewhere else โ belatedly recalls some half-forgotten errand and hurries back, glazing the darkening world afresh with mirrored electric light.
It is beautiful.
And for a moment, Squirrel is lost in it, lifted up and out โ of her bone-deep tiredness, her aching feet, and even for a second that pooling anxiety at returning to the Den once more with next to nothing. But it doesnโt last.
Since noon the Arcโs shadow has lengthened like a sundialโs, its cruel silhouette edging east towards Hillside, ticking down to her dayโs-end destination. A day thatโs so far seen the slimmest of pickings. When the time comes to pass on her haul, her marks will prove to have had little worth stealing; just fellow hole-dwellers, owning little more than the same determination to get out, to scrabble up the same steep-sided trap, using one another for leverage and purchase. But itโs not anything to feel guilty about โ the theft. Not like theyโll miss what she takes, or that most wouldnโt return the favour.
She pauses at one such hole-dweller โย a living statue, a girl, not much older than Squirrel herself. Though not like the ones that used to do it for money, Lilyโd said, where theyโd be pretending, painted up to be stone or bronze, but frozen in catatonic obeisance to some unknown chemical deity, the late-afternoon crowds parting about her like current around a rock. A sudden breeze lifts for a moment the girlโs sodden fringe, and Squirrel notes the tracery of her implant, fine lines spidering beneath the skin of her right temple, and reassesses the blind-eyed stare locked upon some vista that only she can see, the drug likely a mere catalyst for some other, stranger addiction.
But an opportunity is an opportunity. And so, with no high hopes, Squirrel begins to reach out, to probe with invisible fingers, sneaking past the dozing sentries that guard the girlโs addled awareness, half-expecting to find nothing there at all, a blank โ explorations abruptly shut down as, erupting into alarming life, the statue starts to flail and scream, its full-aperture pupils of fathomless black begin to hungrily hunt the crowd for the would-be sneak thief. And the sneak thief in question now striding away, face down, hands thrust deep into hoody pockets, in opposite direction to the heads turning to enjoy the latest entertainment, and away from those more canny who start to scour the crowd for such as her.
She flits across bridges, down side streets, through the well-known maze of piss-perfumed alleys and into a familiar shadowed blindspot, out of sight of mechanical eyes, where she can reverse her top, red to black, pull back the hood and don the beanie from the pocket where precaution had previously stuffed it. Not a sophisticated wardrobe change, but no oneโs followed her anyway, and when she eventually sets out again, edging gingerly back into the dwindling foot-traffic, itโs with a much-slowed pace, her legs telling her she may as well call it a day.
Perhaps sheโs losing her touch.
Not a cheering thought.
But then, there he is: the dayโs redemption, bent over by the bookstall, squinting down at the cracked spines of fifty-year-old paperbacks. Though heโs done his best to dress down, to blend in, there they are โ the signs sheโs been schooled to spot: the too-good shoes, the too-good hair and skin as well; and especially the hands, uncalloused by a life of anything more arduous than airy gestures, the occasional tap or swipe of a screen. He doesnโt belong. Drawn here, as so often they are, for what he cannot get Inside, for the illicit and the contraband, the discontinued and the obsolete. She sidles into range, bends over too, mirroring his immersion โ just a fellow retro fetishist โ gradually leaning her mind in, feeling the familiar but still unsettling buzz as the connection is made. Always a nervy moment. Does he notice? His body wants to, tries to warn him, adjusting the set of his head, stretching out his jaw, igniting an itch at his temple, but his conscious mind remains oblivious, absorbed in the literary flotsam before him.
Heโs been lazy โ or forgetful, if his current distractedness is any clue โ and hasnโt yet acted on those automated reminders to install the latest updates to his implant. And so her own interface connects with ease, strolling in where it shouldnโt be allowed, its search algorithm setting gently to work, silently sifting his private thoughts, unpicking the skeins of memory, pretending to be his banking portal, a message from his mother, a flirty note from the young woman from floor 22 with whom heโs got that casual thing, anything that might trigger those lucrative unconscious associations โ passwords, secrets, indiscretions โ things that can be traded or sold. And all before, alerted by some primitive tripwire in the brainstem, he can begin to wonder, apropos of nothing, why he should be thinking about just those things, and sheโll have to cut and run.
(โRememberโ โ one of Foglerโs favourite, oft-repeated dicta โ โwhatโs valuable ainโt often visible. So unless we know what weโre looking for, we go for bulk collection.โ)
Forget that. Bulk collection takes time โ stood by, lame as a fairground duck, while all that data downloads? Quicker simply to steer the search herself, led by her instincts, her gut, guiding it through her markโs back alleys, his mental byways, intuiting โ her nickname justly earned โ those particular places where she can squirrel out those very things he least wants to give up.
But something is wrong.
Unless something snags her interest, unless she stops to call it up, she should just see snapshots, flicking by like those old flip books for kids, so thinks at first that her intrusion has finally been noticed, that some misstep has provoked her markโs implant into delayed defensive action. But itโs not that โ or at least, not like any counter-intrusion sheโs ever known โ and it rises unbidden, rolling over her inner eye like a wave, swamping out the graphics and figures her own interface superimposes on her retina โ the data flags, the progress stats, the burgeoning memory map โ and all at once she is somewhere else.
Itโs happening again.
She is on some sort of balcony or platform โ though not โsheโ, for Squirrel tries in vain to orient herself, to turn her head or shift viewpoint; but as before, it is evidently not her experience to control. It is an enormous enclosed space, the low ceiling and periodically placed lighting giving for some reason a sense of being โฆ underground, of being somewhere โฆ secret. And stretching off into infinity, row upon row upon row of glass tubes mark dizzying progress toward some indiscernible terminus. Whatโs in them? But theyโre all fogged up with a milky film. If she can just โฆ
And itโs gone, replaced by a kindly, concerned face, cross-lit against the twilight sky by a halo of sunset and streetlight.
โAre you OK?โ asks the mark.
While the stall vendor eyes her shrewdly, the mark himself is benignly oblivious to her intentions, insisting she lay where she has half-fallen, one elbow skewing a now-leaning tower of jacketless hardbacks, while he sends for medical help โ on his own tab too. And even after she stubbornly refuses his repeated offer, insists she is fine, he sighs and solicitously helps her to her feet, checking her over, shaking his head. And as soon as she can sheโs away, trying not to run, barging blindly past shoulders and backs, putting what distance she can between herself and any dawning realisation the mark may soon arrive at โ or to which others may help him.
By the time the adrenalin starts to wear off, her feet have deposited her down by the pier, a once favoured haunt โ one she and Lily had liked, but not now the same without her. Is it higher than it was last year? You used to be able to hear it, Lilyโd said โ or rather, feel: the seasonal subterranean judder as the piles corkscrewed up, raising the Victorian iron edifice another half-foot, a surprised paddler hoisting its curlicued petticoats one hitch higher above the tidesโ ever-greedier swell; other building work too, the lumbering construction bots shoring up the foundations of the Arc, or undergirding those old landmarks outside it that are too big to float. But either all thatโs not needed anymore, or else not all things are worth saving โ the Towers, listing together like two comrades in drink; the Museum, a beached behemoth, its lower levels lost long ago, doorways breached, its windows opening out into the depths, and home now to exhibits nameless, new and strange. Not worth saving does not mean abandoned.
โFancy a fortune, then, Squidge?โ Lilyโs ghost grins as Squirrel passes the old fortune teller. Lily was the only one whoโd called her that โ the only one allowed to, anyway.
โItโll just steal all your particulars,โ Squirrel whispers, mouthing her former words like the lyrics of an old song.
Lily had winked salaciously โ โLike everyone donโt know them all already!โ โ and with a carefree flourish had offered up her braceletted wrist to the panel, and the jangling gesture had provoked a sympathetic ping from the machine, the payment summoning a holographic carnival clairvoyant, all headscarf, beads and many-ringed fingers, its eyes rolling back into its head as it had proceeded to commune with the digital Beyond.
What was the fortune? Forgotten โ all but the bit (which had made them both laugh) about not making any big investments, a thing more to be read in Lilyโs credit score than the lines on her palm.
โThere goes our beachfront condo in Maui.โ Lilyโd shrugged and laughed, though Squirrel hadnโt known what or where those things were, at the time; now doubted Lily had either โ just something one of her punters had said, probably, or a catchphrase from the Feeds. And now she does know, beachfront anythings are the last thing sheโd wish for.
โAlgorithms,โ Lily had spat, suddenly bitter, as the prognosticatorโs image had faded. โWhadda they know.โ
And then one day, just like the hologram, Lily too had faded away, leaving behind only guesses, tight lips and side-mouthed whispers; and of course, Squirrelโs own memories of her โ but which are refusing to fade; which if anything have grown stronger, as if โ she is beginning to fear โ they possess a life of their own.
Tidelands is a weekly serialised sci-fi/fantasy novel that publishes every Friday, emailed straight to your inbox. The first few chapters are free, and subsequent ones are for paid subscribers only (though free subscribers get a free sneak peek). For more about me, the book, and everything you need to know about how to read it, go here.