“It’s nice to meet you,” he said. Standing close to her, JD noticed the bindi she wore just above and between her carefully manicured brows. That was when he recognized her dress for what it was: a monochrome sari. This white girl was playing cultural colonizer two hundred years after the fact. Still he felt a kind of energy emanating from her as Kali eyed him slowly.
“We need some space to talk quietly, don’t we?” She turned and a compact assistant, around ten years old, appeared with a large tablet clutched in both arms. “Protective perimeter with counter-surveillance, please, Andrea.”
Andrea’s mouth moved, but if she spoke JD couldn’t hear her over the background noise of Kali’s crowd dispersing. Some of the followers lingered just beyond the line of self-serious security guards, but most moved on, returning to their homes or whatever tasks Kali had set for them.
“Would you please dismantle your phone?” Kali asked.
“Uh, sure.” JD blinked the pattern for a full shutdown, and when it was finished he fumbled his phone awkwardly out of his pocket. He slid the battery out of its slot, putting the phone and battery into separate jeans pockets.
“I’ll bring him to the workshop once we’re done,” Kali told Soo-hyun. “This way.” Kali turned and began to walk, trailed by the dog drone that had escorted JD in from the canal.
Soo-hyun shoved him forward but stayed behind. He caught up with Kali, and they walked in silence, commune residents staring at Kali wide- and wild-eyed as they passed. JD studied her face surreptitiously, trying to gauge this woman who dressed like a New Age guru and commanded the loyalty of over a hundred million Livideo subscribers. He guessed she was anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, attractive in a plain sort of way. Hers was not a face that many would go to war for, yet she was surrounded by Red and the other zealous teens, armed with cheaply printed guns and excess hormones.
Nine more hacked dogs joined them one by one until they were completely surrounded. The whine of servomotors made a steady rolling sound, and JD found himself falling into step with the machines. His flat-soled sneakers scraped over the worn cement, but Kali’s feet were bare and silent. She hugged herself and stared into the middle distance. The dogs began to emit a steady hiss of static, different frequencies overlapping to form a wall of sound.
“What did you think of my talk?” she asked eventually.
JD considered that for a moment. “I love robots as much as the next guy, but I’m not convinced.” He pitched his voice low, heavy bass traveling beneath the white noise. “It sounds like you want us to give up, as a species. I don’t see that happening.”
“It’s not about giving up, it’s about choosing to retire before the choice is taken from us. Not just that, but retiring to a relaxed life, a life where all of us are equal, all watched over by machines of loving grace.”
JD scoffed. “I don’t believe your talk of equality, either.”
Kali turned to JD and considered him. She nodded. “People think they want equality, but in truth, most of us want someone to tell us what to do. Life is frightening, change is frightening, decision-making is frightening—better to let someone else guide you.”
“I don’t know that I agree.”
“Then you must be truly self-actualized.”
JD smiled but ignored the obvious ploy. He nodded to the families gathered around small fires, cooking rice and noodles in battered aluminum pots. “Shouldn’t all these people have been at your talk?”
“You’re asking if I’m upset by their absence.”
“Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Everyone here is free to do what they want, as long as they contribute. Some people contribute with money, some till the crops, some spread my message. As long as they’re helping Liber, I don’t care what they do with their time. Some people aren’t ready to listen to my talks anyway, they’re still too blinkered. They need to be reached slowly, introduced to new ideas and new experiences carefully so they are not harmed. If someone doesn’t come to the meetings, then by definition they are not ready to come to the meetings.”
They continued walking, the dogs holding to their loose circle of noise, hull plates gleaming. They passed other dogs, legs folded beneath them on standby, waiting for the light of morning to charge their batteries.
“How does Soo-hyun contribute?” JD asked.
“For one thing, they brought you to me. You’re to be part of my vision, Julius. I said before that money turned us into a virus. Well, I need you to recover another virus, one that could alter the course of history.”
“You want me to steal a virus?”
“Steal? Hardly. I’m going to let you in on a secret, Julius. May I call you Jules?”
“JD.”
“Alright, JD. You know who Zero Lee is,” she said. It was not a question.
“Of course.”
“Like any rich man, like any artist, he would never do the work himself if there was an impressionable young person who could do it for him. Here is my secret, JD: I once worked for Zero Lee.”
JD stopped dead in his tracks. “What? Really?” he asked. Kali nodded and waited for JD to catch up. “What is he like?”
“Dying. He was brilliant, and insufferable. But now he’s dying.”
JD’s hands itched with the urge to check this claim, and he quickly patted the disassembled phone parts resting in his pockets. “They’d be talking about it everywhere if that were true.”
“The industry rumor mill says he’s in Scandinavia seeking medical treatment, but one of my sources says he’s already dead, and Zero Corp are keeping it under wraps until they can make a deal with his next of kin. They’ll make the announcement when it will have the smallest impact on the market.”
“Shit,” was all JD could manage.
Kali wrapped a hand around JD’s arm, and walked in step with him. “I used to work for Lee, creating various pieces of software for one of his start-ups. He would provide a design document, but the implementation came down to us. He claimed authorship over these programs but he had no idea how they actually worked. He was a fraud, and that is one of the reasons why I left his employ. But he owned everything I wrote, even the things he didn’t understand.”
She paused, and turned to JD, releasing his arm. She fixed him with a look, her eyes glinting bright, translucent skin otherworldly, lips held slightly apart as though to speak, whistle, or kiss. In that second JD thought he could see her the way Red must—she was beatific.
“I created a virus, a piece of living software unlike anything the world has ever seen, and I had to leave it behind. The loss still hurts, JD. I feel like a mother who lost her child. Lee didn’t even know what he had, but I would be damned before I told him.”
“So you want me to break into his office and take it back?”
“Not his office, his home. But yes.”
JD exhaled through pursed lips. “And if I do that, you’ll pay me fifty thousand euro?”
Kali winced, but nodded. “This software will help me take Songdo from the corporations, so it’s a small price to pay.” She looked at JD and smiled, her pale eyes ice-cold. “If everything works out, you won’t need the money; none of us will.” The words seemed well rehearsed—just like her smile.