Too little has been released to save the Spirit from the worst-case scenario. But maybe enough to limit the tragedy and mess up their scheme.

  It depends on a rather gruesome possibility that one of us thought up. What if—instead of hydrogen—some of the helium cells have been refilled with OXYGEN? After experimenting with the programably permeable polymer, we find that the fuel replenishment process could be jiggered to do that. If so, the compressed combination —

  Oxygen?

  Tor shouted “Wait!” as Warren made a hard stab at one of the green cells, slicing a long vent that suddenly blurped at them.

  This wave of gas wasn’t as cool as the helium had been. It smelled terrific, though. One slight inhale filled Tor with sudden and suspicious exhilaration.

  Uh oh, she thought.

  At that moment, her TruVu display offered a bird’s eye view as one of the new clouds of vented hydrogen contacted dying embers, atop the tormented Spirit of Chula Vista.

  Like a brief sun, each of the refracting bubbles ignited in rapid succession. Thunderclaps shook the dirigible from stem to stern, knocking Tor and Warren off their feet.

  Is this it? Her own particular and special End of the World. Strangely, Tor’s clearest thought was one of professional jealousy. Someone down below ought to be getting truly memorable and historic footage. Maybe on a par with the Hindenberg Disaster.

  While the violent tossing drove Tor into fatalism, all that invigorating oxygen seemed to have an opposite effect upon Warren, who surged to his feet, then charged across the green cell, preparing to attack the giant hydrogen compartment beyond, heedless of the smart-mob, clamoring at him to stop.

  Tor tried to add her own plea, but found that her throat would not function.

  Some reporter, she thought, taking ironic solace in one fact—that her TruVu was still beaming to the Net.

  Live images of a desperately unlikely hero.

  Warren looked positively giddy—on a high of oxygen and adrenaline, but not too drugged to realize the implications. He grimaced with an evident combination of fear and exaltation, while bringing his cutter-tool slashing down upon the polymer membrane—a slim barrier separating two gases that wanted, notoriously, to unite.

  ***

  Sensory recovery came in scattered bits.

  First, a smattering of dream images. Nightmare-flashes about being chased, or else giving chase to something dangerous, across a landscape of burning glass. At least, that was how her mind pictured a piling-on of agonies. Regret. Physical anguish. Failure. More anguish. Shame. And more agony, still.

  When the murk finally began to clear, consciousness only made matters worse. Everything was black, except for occasional crimson flashes. And those had to be erupting directly out of pain—the random firings of an abused nervous system.

  Her ears also appeared to be useless. There was no real sound, other than a low, irritating humming that would not go away.

  Only one conduit to the external world still appeared to be functioning.

  The Voice in her jaw. It had been hectoring her dreams, she recalled. A nag that could not be answered and would not go away. Only now, at least, she understood the words.

  Tor? Are you awake? We’re getting no signal from your specs. But there’s a carrier wave from your tooth-implant. Can you give us a tap?

  After a pause, the message repeated.

  And then again.

  So, it was playing on automatic. She must have been unconscious—out of it—for a long time.

  Tor? Are you awake? We’re getting no signal from your specs. But there’s a carrier wave from your tooth-implant. Can you give us a tap?

  There was an almost overwhelming temptation to do nothing. Every signal that she sent to muscles, commanding them to move, only increased the grinding, searing pain. Passivity seemed to be the lesson being taught right now. Just lie there, or else suffer even more. Lie and wait. Maybe die.

  Also, Tor wasn’t sure she liked the group mind anymore.

  Tor? Are you awake? We’re getting no signal from your specs. But there’s a carrier wave from your tooth-implant. Can you give us a tap?

  On the other hand, passivity seemed to have one major drawback. It gave pain an ally.

  Boredom. Yet another way to torment her. Especially her.

  To hell with that.

  With an effort that grated, she managed to slide her jaw enough to bring the two left canine teeth together in a tap, and then two more. The recording continued a few moments—long enough for Tor to fear that it hadn’t worked. She was cut off, isolated, alone in darkness.

  But the group participants must have been away, doing their own things. Jobs, families, watching the news. After about twenty seconds, though, the Voice returned, eager and live.

  Tor!

  We are so glad you’re awake.

  Muddled by dull agony, she found it hard at first to focus. But she managed to drag one canine in a circle around the other. Universal symbolic code for QUESTION MARK.

 

  The message got through.

  Tor, you are inside a life-sustainment tube. The rescue service found you in the wreckage about twelve minutes ago, but it’s taking some time to haul you out. They should have you aboard a medi-chopper in another three minutes, maybe four.

  We’ll inform the docs that you are conscious. They’ll probably insert a communications shunt when you reach hospital.

  Three rapid taps.

 

  The Voice had a bedside manner.

  Now Tor, be good and let the pros do their jobs. The emergency is over and we amateurs have to step back, right?

  Anyway, you’ll get the very best of care. You’re a hero! Spoiled a reffer plot and saved a couple of hundred passengers. You should hear what MediaCorp is crowing about their “ace field correspondent”. They even back-dated your promotion a few days.

  Everybody wants you now, Tor, the Voice finished, resonating in her jaw without any sign of double entendre. But surely individual members felt what she felt right then.

  Irony—the other bright compensation that Pandora found in the bottom of her infamous Box. At times, irony could be more comforting than hope.

  Tor was unable to chuckle, so her tooth did a half circle and then back.

 

  The Voice seemed to understand and agree.

  Yeah.

  Anyway, we figure you’d like an update. Tap inside if you want details about your condition. Outside for a summary of external events.

  Tor bit down emphatically on the outer surface of her lower canine.

  Gotcha. Here goes.

  It turns out that the scheme was to create a garish zep disaster. But they chiefly aimed to achieve a distraction.

  By colliding the Spirit with a cargo freighter in a huge explosion, they hoped not only to close down the zep port for months, but also to create a sudden fireball that would draw attention from the protective and emergency services. All eyes and sensors would shift for a brief time. Wariness would steeply decline in other directions.

  They thereupon planned to swoop into the Naval research Center with a swarm attack by hyper-light flyers. Like the O’Hare Incident but with some nasty twists. We don’t have details yet. Some of them are still under wraps. But it looks pretty awful, at first sight.

  Anyway, as it turned out, our ad hoc efforts aboard the Spirit managed to expel some of the stockpiled gases early and in an uncoordinated fashion. Several of the biggest cells got emptied, creating gaps. So there was never a single, unified detonation when the Enemy finally pulled their trigger. Just a sporadic fire. That kept the dirigible frame intact, enabling the tug to reel it down to less than a hundred meters.

  Where the escape chutes mostly worked. Two out of three passengers got away without injury, Tor. And the zep port was untouched.

  Trying to picture it in her mind’s eye—perhaps the only eye she had left—took some effort. She was used to so many modern visualization aides that mere words and imagination seemed rather crude. A cartoony image of the Spirit, her vast upper bulge aflame, slanted steeply downward as the doughty Umberto Nobile desperately pulled the airship toward relative safety. And then, slender tubes of active plastic snaking down, offering slide-paths for the tourist families and other civilians.

  The real event must have been quite a sight.

  Her mind roiled with questions. What about the rest of the passengers?

  What fraction were injured, or died?

  How about people down below, on the nearby highway?

  Was there an attack on the Artifact Conference, after all?

  So many questions. But until doctors installed a shunt, there would be no way to send anything more sophisticated than these awful yes-no clicks. And some punctuation marks. Normally, equipped with a TruVu, a pair of touch-tooth implants would let her scroll rapidly through menu choices, or type on a virtual screen. Now, she could neither see nor subvocalize.

  So, she thought about the problem. Information could inload at the rate of spoken speech. Outloading was a matter of clicking two teeth together.

  Perhaps it was the effect of drugs, injected by the paramedics. But Tor found herself thinking with increasing detachment, as if viewing her situation through a distant lens. Abstract appraisal suggested a solution, reverting to much older tradition of communication.

  She clicked the inside of her lower left canine three times. Then the outer surface three times. And finally the inner side three more times.

  What’s that, Tor? Are you trying to say something?

  She waited a decent interval, then repeated exactly the same series of taps. Three inside, three outside, and three more inside. It took one more repetition before the Voice hazarded a guess.

  Tor, a few members and ais suggest that you’re trying to send a message in old-fashioned Morse Code.

  Three dots, three dashes, then three dots. SOS.

  Is that it, Tor?

  She quickly assented with a yes tap. Thank heavens for the diversity of a group mind.

  But we already know you are in pain. Rescuers have arrived. There’s nothing else to accomplish by calling for help... except...

  The Voice paused again. Wait a minute.

  There is a minority theory floating up. A guess-hypothesis.

  Very few modern people bother to learn Morse Code anymore. But most of us have heard of it. Especially that one message you were using. SOS. Three dots, three dashes, three dots. It’s famous from old-time movies.

  Is that what you’re telling us, Tor?

  Would you like us to teach you Morse Code?

  Although she could sense nothing external, not even the rocking of her life-support canister as it was being hauled by evacuation workers out of the smoldering Spirit of Chula Vista, Tor did feel a wash of relief.

  Yes. She tapped.

  Most definitely yes.

  Very well.

  Now listen carefully. We’ll start with the letter A....

  It helped to distract her from worry, at least, concentrating to learn something without all the tech-crutches relied upon by today’s college graduates. Struggling to absorb a simple alphabet code that every smart kid used to memorize, way back in that first era of zeppelins and telegraphs and crystal radios.

  Back when the uncrowded sky had seemed so wide open and filled with innocent possibilities. When the smartest mob around was a rigidly marching army. When a journalist would chase stories with notepad, flashbulbs, and intuition. When the main concern of a citizen was earning enough to put bread on the table. When the Professional Protective Caste consisted of a few cops on the beat.

  Way back, one human life-span ago, when heroes were tall and square-jawed, in both fiction and real life.

  Times had changed. Now, destiny could tap anybody on the shoulder, even the shy or unassuming. You, me, the next guy. Suddenly, everybody counts on just one. And that one depends on everybody.

  Tor concentrated on her lesson, only dimly aware of the vibrations conveyed by a throbbing helicopter, carrying her (presumably) to a place where modern miracle workers would strive to save—or rebuild—what they could.

  Professionals still had their uses, even in the rising Age of Amateurs. Bless their skill. Perhaps—with luck and technology—they might even give Tor back her life.

  Right now, though, one concern was paramount. It took a while to ask the one question that burned foremost in her mind, since she needed a letter near the end of the alphabet. But as soon as they reached it, she tapped out a Morse Code message that consisted of one word.

  WARREN

  She did not expect anything other than the answer that her fellow citizens gave.

  Even with the hydrogen cell contracting at full force to expel most of its contents skyward, there would have been more than enough right there, at the oxygen-rich interface, to incinerate one little man. One volunteer. A hero, leaving nothing to bury, but scattering microscopic ashes all the way across his nation’s capital.

  Lucky guy, she thought, feeling a little envy for his rapid exit and inevitable fame.

  Tor recognized what the envy meant, of course. She was ready to enter the inevitable phase of self-pity. A necessary stage.

  But not for long. Only till they installed the shunt.

  After that, it would be back to work. Lying immersed in sustainer-jelly and breathing through a tube? That wouldn’t stop a real journalist. The web was a beat rich with stories, and Tor had a feeling. She would get to know the neighborhood a whole lot better.

  And we’ll be here, assured the smart mob. If not us, then others like us.

  You can count on it Tor. Count on us.

  We all do.

  * * *

  David Brin is an astrophysicist whose international best-selling novels include The Postman, Earth, and recently Existence. His nonfiction book about the information age—The Transparent Society—won the Freedom of Speech Award of the American Library Association. davidbrin.com

  “The Smart Mob” is an excerpt from the novel Existence (2012).

  Business as Usual

  by Pat Cadigan

  I was 12 when Nonna–Grandma to you non-Italians–told me her new insulin pump was out to get her.

  She used to fret about the Internet of things when I was growing up, but this was special. Her previous pumps had to be connected to a computer to send data about her blood sugar to the local clinic. This new one could log on to a dedicated network all by itself without her help or knowledge.

  “This thing is the devil, Cara Mia,” she said, using my full name as always. It had been her suggestion to my birth mother, who had been too tired delivering her third child to argue. I’d given up trying to get her to call me just Cara. “It’s the devil and it hates me. It’s just that simple.”

  It was February, and both the weather and Nonna’s disposition were awful, so my mothers asked me to get her out of the house for a while. I decided to take her to OutDoorsIn—I thought the simulated springtime might smooth her out in spite of herself. Nonna had mixed feelings about the place. She’d been known to enjoy Christmas shopping there, but she also said it was a glorified shopping mall for pod people. She frowned like a thunderstorm when I maneuvered her wheelchair onto the tram and spent the whole ride staring glumly out the window at the sleet in silence. But when I rolled her out of the entryway into the lakeside zone rather than the shopping village, her hackles went right down. I bought a few loaves of bread from an attendant, and we fed the ducks for a while. Nonna loved the ducks.

  Eventually, she felt more like talking than sulking, although she wasn’t quite through with my mothers. “They think I don’t know. Ha! I’m old, not stupid, Cara Mia.”

  “Nonna, no one wants to get rid of you,” I said. “You’ve been stuck in the house because of the ice and snow. School’s closed so I can take you out for a change of scene. I’d have taken you outside for real, but you don’t have snow tires.”

  That made her laugh, and I could see her disposition veer away from if-I’m-in-hell-so-are-you. She wasn’t done complaining, but at least it wasn’t a full- throated aria about everything that was wrong with the world, starting with artificial environments and moving on to all the medical advances that had come too late for many older people, who would gladly, Nonna said, do for themselves, living independently in their own homes instead of burdening their families, if only the flesh would cooperate. It was just that simple.

  I don’t know exactly how the subject turned to technology— I think I said something about the way the air smelled, just like it was really April— but somehow we went from there to the Internet of things that were out to get her.

  “That’s what we called it in my day, Cara Mia, the ‘Internet of things,’” she said. “When they were just starting to put little brain-boards in everything, even price tags. Now you don’t call it anything, I guess. It’s just life to you.” I made a polite, I’m-listening noise. You had to let her know at regular intervals that you could hear her or she would talk louder. “Everything’s all netted up and webbed up to everything else. Vending machines and toilets and air conditioners, toasters and airplanes and ceiling lights. I thought I’d seen it all when they gave cars personalities.”

  “It’s just an interface that makes it easier for people to operate them,” I said, for what might have been the billionth time.

  “Yeah, sure.” She waved a hand dismissively. “That’s how they got that bullshit into people’s houses. Your pal, the hub, your personal household assistant, always on the case, looking out for you. Your mothers talk to it every morning. You know they call it Glinda? ‘Hey, Glinda, check the fridge, will ya? The milk was bad this morning. I only bought it two days ago.’ Anybody talked like that in my day, they’d end up in a rubber room.”

  I pictured one of those old-fashioned bouncy castles they have in old-time county fairs, but I knew that couldn’t be right.

  “Or if you went out in public talking to invisible people,” she went on. “Not just talking but waving your hands around like a half-assed mime, gesturing at things no one else can see unless they’re glassed-in or on-topic’ed or whatever the hell they’re saying these days. And don’t start with me about virtual spaces. What I’ve forgotten about virtual spaces it would take everybody in them, right now, the rest of their lives to learn. Which is pretty goddam sad, considering all the time they saved by not learning any manners.”