The Unidentified (8 page)

My intouch(r) purred a double-buzz.

mikes:
i know how we can catch them. FIND ME.

@KID Mikey was being cryptic, but I knew that strangely we were thinking about the same thing. It happened all the time —it was kind of creepy.

“‘Find me,’” I said to myself, opening my notebook(r) and navigating to Mikey’s page. He had a really annoying animation that launched when you clicked.

I glanced at the RIGHT NOW section of his sidebar. He was logged in to the DIY Depot on the fourth floor. And he was a genius.

Mikey had like a little rat’s nest in the DIY Depot, off to the side of the Robot Combat Arena where kids were getting ready for the prizefights tomorrow afternoon. It was the most popular activity in the DIY Depot. Everyone who wanted to compete engineered and built the toughest remote-controlled robots to battle it out in the arena. The current champion robot and its creator were featured at the entrance, along with the hardware supply sponsors who shared in the glory of the tin warrior’s continued victory.

I crept carefully into Mikey’s nest, eyeballed the wobbly tower of crates filled with electronics parts, and tried to sit where it was least likely to crush me if it fell. Mikey’s workspace was hazardous—he left live wires lying around everywhere. The instructors who patrolled the area always reminded him about safety procedures, but Mikey was hard to convince. So they just shook their heads and waited with fire extinguishers ready.

Mikey looked up from soldering something in his little robot’s brain.

I peeked over his shoulder at the splayed parts of his combat robot. “He’s not going to be ready for the fight tomorrow,” I said. It was a statement, but Mikey took it as a question.

“Yeah, of course. Look at him.”

Mikey picked up the controllers and made the gimpy robot use two of its working legs to push itself around in a robot use two of its working legs to push itself around in a circle on its skateboard wheels.

He laughed maniacally. “It’s alive!”

I hit Record, trying to get Mikey’s laugh for my collection.

Mikey spent all his time working on the most pathetic little spidery-legged robot. It was raw-clumsy and adorable.

Mikey called it Cripple. It got stomped in the arena. We’re talking mutilated. Mikey always fixed it up again though.

A Level 16 techboy poked his head over a pile of scrap metal.

“You’re wasting your time, Littleton. That spindly little wimp of a robot needs to get scrapped.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Cripple.
You
need to get scrapped,” Mikey muttered while he adjusted the delicate joints in Cripple’s skinny knees. “Jerk.”

“Hey,” I said to Mikey. “Nice deductive skills , Detective Gumshoe.” I waved my intouch(r) in the air, referring to his FIND ME message.

Mikey put his finger to his lips, picked up Cripple’s remote control, and moved closer to me.

He spoke quietly, tossing a glance over to the top of the partition making sure that kid didn’t pop his head up again.

“I was thinking we could use the log-on tracker in reverse.” He fiddled with the knobs on his remote control, testing out all of Cripple’s joints and continued in a low voice. “Use the scene of the crime to give us a list of suspects.”

“Why are you whispering?” I whispered back.

“Because it could be a conspiracy,” he hissed.

I laughed loudly.

“Shh!” he said.

“You don’t think it’s a conspiracy,” I whispered in his ear.

He made a big deal about tucking my hair back behind my ear, then leaned in close. “No,” he whispered. “I just think it’s really fun to be secretive and pretend to be paranoid.”

He leaned back and grinned.

“Yeah, OK.” I laughed. But I looked over my shoulder anyway. Maybe it was what that guy said this morning, how “they” were watching us, wanting to know how we made choices. And how my PLAY clue just
happened
to be about the physics of free fall. I was getting good and genuinely paranoid myself.

“But we checked out the scene of the crime yesterday,”

I said, trying to figure out where we could apply our brilliant new spy technique, “there wasn’t anything on the fifth floor besides tampered security cameras.”

“Yeah, there was.”

Fifth floor, Audio/Viz.

“It’s really the only place they could go to edit their film so fast and upload it immediately.”

He was right. When I’d linked to the Unidentified video that morning, the time stamp said the film had gone up not even an hour after the event itself. That was a pretty fast turnaround time to edit, render, and upload.

Since notebooks(r) were only equipped for Network, searching on Archive, and software sponsors’ limited-time trial applications, this was the only place that had the resources to pull off the kind of postproduction used for the Unidentified film.

Mikey peeked into the window display at Audio/Viz.

There was a single screen showing random clips of films that students had made.

“That’s mine. Do you see it?” Mikey said.

I saw a quick close-up of what looked like a cardboard box covered in tinfoil with flashing red lights.

“What’s your film about?”

“A zombie movie, except with robots.”

I laughed.

We logged in to Audio/Viz. When the light blinked over to green, I was suddenly really aware of how my activity was being tracked inside the Game. Stepping through the doors, I just hoped the same mechanism that let the administrators know where I was right now would give us clues as to who used the equipment yesterday morning.

This room was a lot like the Arcade, except with machines set up with digital video editing software instead of the grabbest online video games.

We walked around the store, not really knowing what we were looking for.

“What are we looking for?”

“I don’t know—evidence?” Mikey said, sitting behind a keyboard, pretending to hack.

I laughed. “This is so effing Crime Scene Extreme.

Seriously though, is it even
possible
to view log-in records user-side?”

“Hmm, yes,” Mikey said tapping his finger on his chin pseudointellectually. “You’re right. This sounds like a job for a Crackhead.”

Mikey whipped out his intouch(r) and started writing a message.

mikes:
where you playing? @SWIFT
swiftx:
arcade @MIKEY
mikes:
wanna pop next door, audio/viz? @SWIFT It was a while before he answered again. I was following the conversation on my intouch(r).

swiftx:
what is it? i’m about to get promoted @MIKEY “He’s playing Buy, Sell& Destroy,” Mikey said, as if I weren’t already totally lurking through the entire exchange.

kidzero:
please? @SWIFT I wrote, buttoning in on their conversation again.

swiftx:
kid with you? @MIKEY I was mortified.

mikes:
yes. @SWIFT
kidzero:
hi. @SWIFT We looked at each other while we waited for his reply.

Mikey mouthed,
You’re so rude.

I knew he was just teasing me, but I felt my face get hot. I usually wasn’t that bothered when I made a fool of myself, but this was different. This was Jeremy Swift.

swiftx:
let me save my game. @MIKEY, @KID I smiled at my intouch(r). It was such a kick when Jeremy @ed me. I got the same roller-coaster drop in my stomach as I did when he looked at me yesterday.

“Oh, stop,” Mikey said, irritated.

“What?”

“‘What?’” he mocked.

I punched him on the shoulder, mostly to hide my embarrassment that I apparently wasn’t fooling anybody.

Jeremy slouched in through the Audio/Viz doors, hands in his pockets, squinting at everyone from behind his shaggy bangs like the slacker rockstar that he was. He saw Mikey and me and nodded his head in our direction.

We went to meet him.

“What’s going on?” Swift said, brushing his hair out of his eyes.

I swallowed. Mikey nudged me.

“Is there any way we could see the Audio/Viz login records? We need to see who used the editing stations between like…I don’t know, the dummy dropped a little after nine,” I said.

“Whoa, players don’t have access to log-in records,” e said. “Why’re you asking me?”

“Because you’re a Crackhead,” Mikey said, emphasizing the “rrr” in Crackhead. “So, come on. Show us the score.”

“For yesterday morning. Between, like, nine to eleven a.m.,” I added.

“Does this have anything to do with that video you were watching the other day?” Swift said to me.

“Um, yeah,” I said, kind of surprised he put it together so quickly. “We’re trying to find out who pulled that anti-PR prank yesterday morning. Some group calling themselves the Unidentified.”

“Never heard of them,” Swift said, shrugging. “Look, log-in records are purged daily after closing time to protect player privacy.”

Mikey poked Swift in the chest. “You make a really lousy Crackhead.”

Swift slapped Mikey’s hand away. “Fawk off.”

“So what’s our next move?” Mikey asked, turning to me.

I glanced at Jeremy. He was playing around with his intouch(r), reading streams. But I caught him peeking over at us. I tried to smile naturally even though I felt like his gaze was pinning my butterfly heart. Seemed like he was interested to know what our next move was too, trying to listen in. Or maybe I was just hoping he was interested.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

Jeremy smiled wide. “Hey, have either of you heard anything about an Illegal Arts Workshop today?” he asked.

I shrugged. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t feel entirely comfortable telling Mikey and Jeremy about my run-in with the mysterious man in the bushes. Okay, the mysterious man and his ex-Fashion Fascist girlfriend. I guess the truth didn’t sound as scandalous.

“I’ve heard rumors,” Jeremy said.

“You want to check it out?” Mikey asked me hopefully.

“I’ve got time.”

“But we were supposed to meet up with Ari at the Studio.”

Mikey rolled his eyes. “How many times this week has Ari blown off band practice? Please express the probability of her being there today in the form of a ratio.”

“What, you don’t think she’s going to come?”

Mikey just shook his head.

I took out my intouch(r) to let Ari know to meet us in Prime Real Estate instead. I knew she didn’t have the greatest track record of making it to practice lately, but I wasn’t going to give up on her.

Besides, she’d be upset if we went to an Illegal Arts Workshop without telling her. I passed the word on.

kidzero:
change of plans. IAW! tick tock 02, PRE @ARI “Let’s go,” I said, feeling kind of guilty that the excitement I felt was more for the idea of hanging out with Swift than learning some forbidden skill .

Illegal Arts Workshops were held in Prime Real Estate, the row of empty storefronts that had been reserved for players to use, to encourage young entrepreneurs to get involved in the joys of retail and business. The kids who got their proposals approved to set up shop in Prime Real Estate sometimes loaned out their space to friends who wanted to share skills that the administrators would never OK. These clandestine activities always got a good turnout. Forbidden knowledge had its all ure.

Jeremy walked with us across the hall to the Prime Real Estate wing.

Ari was standing outside one of the storefronts, waiting for us to get there. I waved and her eyes practically ballooned out of her head when she saw us walking with Jeremy.

“Hi, Swift,” she said like a sigh.

“Hey,” he said quickly, then looked over her head, trying to get a better view at the crowd inside. “See you guys.” Swift glanced back over his shoulder at Mikey and me as he slipped inside.

Ari squeezed my arm excitedly and mouthed,
He’s so

prize.

“Ready to go in?” I asked, reaching back and grabbing Mikey’s hand too.

Mikey’s hand too.

The swipe card log-in had been disabled, so no record was being kept of who was here. A semifamous newbie with a particular preteen style was holding open the door.

“Hey, I know you,” I said, before I could stop myself.

“Do you?” she said icily.

I thought carefully for a minute. She was Lexie Phillips.

I knew that, but I guess I didn’t really
know
her.

I shrugged. “Right. My mistake.”

Lexie took a step back, opening the door wider so the three of us could file in.

There were more kids packed in here than in regularly scheduled, administration-approved workshops. I wondered what we would be learning, and who would be teaching.

We never really got a chance to find out. The lights dimmed a bit and a voice boomed out, distorted through some speakers. “Hey, everyone. Thanks for coming.”

Mikey and I exchanged a glance. Illegal Arts Workshops usually weren’t so…theatrical. Past IAWs involved a Tinkerer teaching people how to build paint guns or Gear-heads meeting to organize street races. But they all just used the Prime Real Estate classroom as a meeting place, they didn’t set up all these smoke and mirrors.

“If everyone could open their notebooks(r), we can begin.” The teacher voice walked us through the ways to find and use anonymous proxies to get to sites blocked from Archive without a record being kept of our viewing habits. He also helped us install profile trackers to see who visited our pages. Ari looked at me smugly, like she was so visited our pages. Ari looked at me smugly, like she was so far ahead of the illicit trend.

“This will flip the lights on in the dark room on the other side of the two-way mirror. Put the audience in the spotlight.” Even though the voice was protectively distorted, the cadence and word choice gave him away. It was the voiceover from the Unidentified video, I was sure of it.

I looked around to see who else was in attendance. As usual, hardly any branded kids showed up. They knew that if their names weren’t on the guest list, then it wasn’t an event worth going to.

Swift was there, of course. But he was a Crackhead.

His sponsors knew he was a “bad boy” when they branded him. It was probably why they did.