After closing the message window, I threw some final items in my suitcase—swimsuit, bug repellant, mouth cleaner. Then, satisfied that I had enough underwear and socks for the trip, I zipped up my bag, scratched Peeve behind the ears, and did a dummy check of the apartment. I put a sticky reminder on my comms to add the dog walker to our apartment’s access list while we were gone.
I took the elevator down and stepped onto the street. A green, blue, and purple rainbow arced overhead, indicating the mosquitoes were hard at work emptying their bladders on us.9 The plan was to teleport to the San José TC, and from there hire a car to drive us to our resort in the mountains of Santa Elena. My wife had scheduled us a full itinerary of hiking in the cloud forest in search of quetzals, drinking terrible local wine, and getting into shouting matches with howler monkeys. Instead of watching the July Fourth Last War memorial fireworks, Sylvia’s plan was to drink Cerveza Imperials in our hotel room hot tub and celebrate our independence from International Transport for a few days. She’d chosen Costa Rica because it was one of the few countries left that didn’t have TCs everywhere, and it was the place where we had honeymooned ten years ago.
Shit. Where did she say we were supposed to meet?
I tried comming Sylvia.
Instead, an animated Rosie the Riveter avatar obscured my field of vision, causing me to trip on the sidewalk and bang my shin on my luggage. “Shit!”
I reduced the size of the comms window, making sure to dial down the background opacity so I could avoid any more obstacles.
The avatar displayed a concerned emoji expression. “Ouch. Are you okay, Joel?” It was Julie, Sylvia’s AIDE, or Artificially Intelligent Digital Entity. Basically, a personal assistant app with extra cruft. They acted as proxies for their owners, doing everything from personal shopping to paying bills to interfacing with coworkers when the owner was indisposed.
Most were fairly businesslike, but Sylvia had put a lot of extra effort toward giving Julie a personality. My wife was an only child, often lonely growing up. Getting her very own AIDE when she joined IT must have felt a lot like being handed a brand-new sibling, only one who would always be there for her, would always support her, and would never, ever ask for money. Sylvia nurtured her new app. She confided in Julie, asked her for advice, pushed her to be assertive and wise and funny. She even taught her to be a feminist, hence Julie’s choice of the Rosie avatar.
There was nothing wrong with the depth of their relationship, per se. Most people had a strong emotional bond with their AIDEs, somewhere on the spectrum between favorite pet and best friend, depending on one’s needs. I, however, always saw AIDEs as buckets of semicognitive code with finite complexity, designed to create the illusion of sentience.
I rubbed my shin. “Ouch is right. There goes my marathoning career.”
“And look, you’re outside! Is this your monthly day of exercise?” Julie’s avatar gave a jaunty wink.
“You know, for a comedienne you’re one hell of a personal assistant. Can we back-burner the hilarity, though? Sylvia unplugged before she told me where we were meeting.”
“Sorry. I’ve been studying up on humor. A lot of research shows it puts you bipedal carbon plasma bags at ease.”
“Oh, it’s definitely working,” I answered dryly, knowing she’d detect the sarcastic tone. This is why no self-respecting salter would ever own an AIDE. Their eagerness to please is practically an invitation to be pwnd, or maliciously salted. But hacking an AIDE is a felony, on the level of grand larceny. To a natural-born salter, it’s like putting a carrot in front of a famished rabbit, then separating the two with an electrified grate. “Now that you’ve put me at ease, can you tell me where my wife is?”
“You betcha! Sylvia’s looking forward to this; she told me to hold all her comms before she left. Except for you, natch. I’ve got a bunch of great canned responses in case any of her program managers try to interrupt her vacation. Do you want to hear ’em? They’re hilarious!”
“I, uh, no. I’m almost at the TC, so I just need to know where she is. I don’t want to spend the evening looking for her.”
“Okay. There’s a rum joint called the Monkey Bar. It’s walking distance from customs. I just sent you the GDS location. Don’t be too late or she’ll be dancing on the tables.”
“Oooh, maybe I should take my time then.”
“Oooh, now you’re the funny one. I should have you salt me. On second thought, no. If you did that, then everyone would just hang up on me.”
“And they don’t already?”
“No, they d—”
I hung up.
Just as I was about to step on the Greenwich Village TC escalator, a young auburn-haired woman stepped in front of me. She looked out of place, even for NYC. She had animated, glowing LED strands of orange and red woven through her hair; they looked like smoldering embers. Her outfit was even weirder: a long, ruffled white gown, olive-green army jacket, and muddy hiking boots on her feet. She clutched a bag that appeared to contain a giant horse saddle and was deliberately blocking the entrance of the TC.
“Excuse me,” I said, attempting to maneuver around her.
“Is this the Greenwich Village Teleportation Center?” she asked, looking me up and down like I was an extraterrestrial. Her delivery was curt, dismissive. I couldn’t place the accent, somewhere Latin.
“That’s what it says on the sign, lady,” I said, responding in kind.
She nodded, and without another word stepped onto the moving walkway.
I got on right behind her. Weirdo.
I saw her stiffen as we went through the nanite misters, but the moving walkway continued, depositing us before the bank of outgoing teleportation chambers. She looked around as if unsure where to go next. I pointed her toward the shortest queue, then joined my own line. The woman went into her chamber right before I did, giving me one last sidelong glance. I figured it was her first time teleporting.
The barrier to my chamber lowered. I stepped into the foyer, dropping my luggage in the prescribed compartment and sitting in the chair that levitated into the Punch Escrow chamber. There, the conductor confirmed my destination, and I agreed to the displayed legalese. As the lights dimmed, I began to debate whether my first drink at the Monkey Bar should be a mojito or a zombie.
Then—nothing.
Nothing happened.
There was no blinding white flash to indicate my arrival in the San José TC vestibule. No alarms, no announcement. Just darkness. I didn’t think much of it. I assumed there had been a brownout in Costa Rica; they still happened occasionally in non-thermal-powered countries. I got up and felt my way toward the exit, promptly slamming my nose into the concrete wall. Ow.
I heard muffled voices outside, and monkey-walked my way toward them, grasping on to the chair’s magnetic guides against the wall to orient myself. Finally, after a few more painful bumps, I fumbled my way to the exit barrier. I pushed and pulled on the hard plastic until it lowered. I stepped over it, into the light, and found myself face-to-face with the conductor. The Greenwich conductor. He had orange hair, a purple birthmark on his face in the shape of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, and an open mouth. He gaped at me like he was seeing a ghost.