Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 7: March 2014 (22 page)

As if to punctuate his comment, the diapered chimp screamed its lungs out on the far side of the room, in the filthy makeshift kitchen.

“You signed the T.O.S.” With practiced flicks of my eyes, I played the controls of my A.R. contact lenses. The image
of a terms
of service agreement appeared in midair between us, visualized as a sheet of paper filled with print and adorned with Bryon’s signature at the bottom. Long ago, he had signed over his destiny to Crowdlife, the ultimate crowdsourcing social network, just like all the rest of us.

A century after Facebook and company, social networks truly ran the world. Everyone’s fate was in the hands of everyone else; people voted to determine each other’s fates, right down to the smallest detail.

The system ran pretty well, truth
be
told. Hard work and kindness were often rewarded by majority vote; cruelty and criminality were often punished the same way. People pretty much got what they deserved … usually.

Though I’d be lying if I said that the outcomes always made sense, or that everyone was always happy with their own personal outcome.

“I agreed to accept the will of the Crowd, yes,” snapped Byron. “But that
can’t
be what
this
is, Agent Grice.”

As he glared at me, brief notes appeared in midair around him, visible to my A.R. lenses—social me
s
sages from the Yapstream posted by the multitudes watching Byron’s story unfold:

69Bill69:
Yes it CAN be!

FrtInspktr:
The Crowd says U SUK

SuzieQ4U:
But what if he’s 4 real?

Just then, Byron’s wife, Sylvia, emerged from a doorway, armed with a broken broom handle. Waving it at the chimp, she drove the animal back three screeching steps. “Our likeability index is sky-high!” She scrubbed dirty fingers through her willy-nilly bird’s nest of tangled brown hair. “We get
millions
of smiles on Crowdlife every
day
!”

Something swam past me—gnat-cam or insect, I couldn’t tell—and I swatted it away. “You know that isn’t how it works, ma’am. Likeability doesn’t always correlate with fate-voting.”

BoogaBooga99:
Damn right!!!

FrtInspktr:
Forget smiles, I’d give em puke faces all the time.

NoItAll3000:
But I like em! Giving em 100 smiles right now in fact!

“I’m telling you, something’s
wrong
this time!” Sylvia lunged with the broom handle, driving the chimp back further. “We’re too
well-loved
for the Crowd to drop us this
low
!” She jabbed the handle again, and the chimp whirled and darted through a doorway. As Sylvia raced after it, the animal’s screeches were joined by the screams of the Chellinghams’ three young children.

All that noise made my stomach churn, setting off the ongoing pain in my gut. “Look.” I turned to Byron. “I get it. You don’t like this outcome.”

SweetHawk7:
You tell im, COE boy!

CowwSezMoo:
Spoiled rich piece of crap

“Being transformed from billionaire to pauper? Terrorized by a chimp in a diaper?” Byron laughed like he was ready to jump off a building. “What makes you say that?”

“These things have a way of working themselves out,” I told him. “If you play your cards right, the Crowd could send you straight back to the top overnight.”

SuzieQ4U:
Thats
right we could do that.

Gr8Wite:
I’ll vote for em in a heart beat!

ExpltvDletd:
Me too

FrtInspktr:
I say vote em another monkey!!

“But what if this
isn’t
the will of the Crowd?” said Byron. “What if a single embittered individual is behind all this?”

I scowled.
“A lifehacker?”

“I’ve heard of it happening before!” As Byron said it, the screeching chimp barreled out of the kids’ room and hurtled across the apartment. “Trolls hacking the fatevote to get what they want.”

“Fairy tales,” I said. “Crowdlife’s unhackable.”

69Bill69:
I heard theres a guy who

FrtInspktr:
Nothings unhackable you boob.

Jabbawokky75:
#lifehackers. No such thing bitches.

“Will you at least look into it?” Byron stepped forward and raised a hand as if to touch my arm, then withdrew it. “Please?” His eyes practically throbbed with desperation. Behind him, his wife charged after
the chimp, howling with rage. “Because I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

CowwSezMoo:
That’s what they all say

Too true, that note from the Yapstream. I’d never met a gracefaller who didn’t say the same thing.
Words to that effect, at least.
And I’d never met one who said they deserved what the fatevote stuck them with.

FrtInspktr:
Tellim eff off LOL!

HackensteinXXX:
Looooser!

Still, something kept nagging at me. Even as my brain and the Yapstream told me to turn my back on these people, my gut said something different. In all my years with the C.O.E., I’d never seen a fall from grace so precipitous or bizarre.

What if lifehacking wasn’t a fairy tale, after all?

As I stood there, thinking about it, someone knocked hard on the apartment door. Byron brushed past me and opened it wide.

KangaCult101:
Oboy I
cant
wait to see this!

SinrHatr:
Latest fatevote’s in, I just saw whats comin.

CowwSezMoo:
Holy eff eff eff!!!

“Mr. Chellingham?” A man in a white Crowdlife Fatemaker uniform looked in from the hallway. He didn’t wait for Byron to answer before pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with snakes through the doorway.
“Special delivery, sir.”

The Fatemaker dumped the snakes in the middle of the floor, sending them squirming in all directions.

CallMeGodd:
OMG! Look at em all!

Jabbawokky75:
Dance, bitches, dance!

“See what I mean?” Byron stared at me. “Do you really think I deserve all this? Why would the
Crowd
vote to do something this
insane
?”

But the Fatemaker wasn’t done yet. “Bring in the next load!”

A second white-uniformed man rolled in a rusty gray steel drum on a dolly and set it down near the snakes. With help from the first man, he pushed the drum over, sending putrid brown sludge oozing over the floor.

It was raw sewage. The smell was so strong, it made me gag.

“Excuse me, Mr. Chellingham.” The first Fatemaker held out a tablet computer and a stylus toward Byron. “Wouldja put your John Hancock right there, sir?”

FrtInspktr:
Suh-weet!

JudyJudyJulie:
Talk about adding insult to injury!

Byron just glared at him.

The Fatemaker cleared his throat. “Just, uh, need you to sign for this, sir. Please.”

Byron turned to me. I could hardly hear his next words over the chimp’s screeching as it swung fistfuls of snakes against the wall, bashing their heads in. “Will you at least look into it?”

I told him I would.

***

After the Chellinghams’, I went straight home and jacked into the Crowdlife Backlot—the vast virtual workspace linking employees like me with Crowdlife’s behind-the-scenes infrastructure.

As interpreted by my A.R. contact lenses, the Backlot looked like an enormous crystalline city sprawling over a sun-soaked plain. My point of view was high above it, gazing down from a gold-tinted sky. The view was uniquely private, free of all social network connections.

I blinked hard, and a drop-down text menu of city sectors appeared in the upper right corner of my field of vision. Flicking my eyes, I chose the last option and began my approach, drifting down through streamers of cloud toward a tall tower.

When I found the right office, on the tower’s 85th floor, I flew straight in; there were no walls or wi
n
dows to block my way in this virtual environment.

As I landed, a young woman looked up from inside a conical well of holographic computer screens, dozens of them flashing with rivers of data.

“Cage!”
She perked up instantly when she saw me and tucked strands of glossy black hair behind her ears. She was beautiful, and not just because that’s how she chose to look in the Backlot. “What’s the o
c
casion?”

“Just paying a visit to my favorite Outcomes Analyst.”
I couldn’t help smiling when I said it. “And let me just say you’re looking lovelier than ever, Liz.”

“Flatterer.”
Liz brushed a hand along the well in front of her, opening a gap, then got up from her chair and walked through it. “But I like what I’m hearing.”

“There’s more.” I shrugged. “I’m looking for something.”

Liz grinned and moved closer. “Aren’t we all? I’m sure we can find it together.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” I said. “Do lifehackers even exist?”

Liz looked at me like I was crazy.
“Lifehackers?
That’s what you’re looking for?”

The ever-present pain in my gut spiked,
then
receded. “There’s this family of gracefallers. They’ve been handed an unusually extreme outcome.”

The fire drained right out of Liz as she leaned back away from me. “Crowdlife has spoken. They signed the T.O.S., didn’t they?”

“Yeah, but …” I shook my head.
“This outcome.
It’s so extreme, it’s
insane
. We’re talking a billionaire reduced to poverty, forced to live on Skid Row with a crazed chimpanzee.”

Liz shrugged. “It happens, Cage. Sometimes a crazy outcome goes viral and sweeps the fatevote.”

“It gets crazier,” I said. “There’s a wheelbarrow full of snakes and a drum of raw sewage dumped in the apartment.”

Liz sighed and turned away, heading back to her data well. “Lifehackers are a myth. Crowdlife is u
n
hackable.”

“So I’ve heard.” I followed her to the well. “Could you do some digging anyway?”

Throwing herself down on her chair, she closed the gap in the well as if she were drawing a curtain across it. “Let me see what I can do.”

***

While Liz dug deep on the data side of things, I punched out to take some personal time. I had to step away for an appointment I’d been dreading.

Because as much as I wished it
were
otherwise, not everything was controlled by Crowdlife.

As I sat in Dr. Duncan’s office and waited to hear his verdict, Yapstream posts popped up around him via
my A.R. contacts.

SuzieQ4U:
Praying for him so hard.

JudyJudyJulie:
Fingers and toes all crossed

TouchyFeely50:
I can’t stand the suspense!

I read a few, but they were coming thick and fast. Moments like this brought the rubberneckers out in force.

“Mr. Grice,” said Dr. Duncan. “I’m afraid the news isn’t good.” His eyes were locked on the tablet computer in his hands. “Not good at all.”

“Sorry to hear that.” I sat back in my chair.

“Gene therapy has failed to prevent additional metastatic activity,” said Dr. Duncan. “Future remission of your cancer is unlikely.”

“Right.”
I nodded. “Okay then.”

DogssBreakfasst:
Poor son of a bitch

TouchyFeely50:
I swear Im gonna cry!

SweetHawk7:
OMG!

“What this means,” said Dr. Duncan, “is a dramatically reduced life expectancy.”

I cleared my throat. “How much time do I have left?”

“Based on your latest test results, I’d say not much.” Dr. Duncan looked up from his tablet. “Two months, minimum.
Four at the outside.”

“I understand.” Swallowing hard, I tried to ignore the swarm of popups filling the A.R. field all around Dr. Duncan.

SweetHawk7:
I AM CRYING SO HARD RIGHT NOW!!!

PrestoKarmaKid:
Poor guys got NO ONE, does he?

FrtInspktr:
Not since we voted for his wife to divorce him.

“Now, it’s possible,” said Dr. Duncan, “that we might prolong your life a bit with targeted nanotherapy. Millions of guided nanomechs would deliver microburst neochemotherapy to cancerous sites.” He paused. “Though as you know, that brings with it certain undesirable side effects.”

“How much more time would that buy me?”