Crowe and Coyote

Crowe and Coyote II

It was two thirty. Moll's cortical implants, sending information into the bottom lefthand corner of her field of vision, were telling her to GET HOME, GET HOME. Moll's liver, soaked as it was in soy-vodka, was telling her to get home as well.

There was a lensing, a strange stretching of her consciousness. She focused again on all fours in a bar bathroom, forehead pressed against the sticky seat of a public toilet. A strangely festive-looking mass of pink and yellow, presumably her own vomit, was swimming in the tank.

"Fuck," Moll said succinctly, and threw up again.

Her implants, apparently in constant contact alarm mode, flashed another message into her field of vision.

HIGH LEVEL OF ALCOHOL IN BODY. POSSIBILITY OF REDUCED FUNCTION DO TO ALCOHOL POISONING. BYPASS TOXINS Y/N?

"No," Moll croaked, drunk enough to speak out loud to herself. "Drinkin' myself to death here." Another lurching in her stomach sent her over the toilet again, retching.

Irritatingly, even when vomiting, the letters showed up bright and clear.

CALL BOBBIT Y/N?

"No," Moll said, more forcibly than she intended. With some effort, she managed to subvocalize:

Cease alarm mode.

CODE WORD?

Fuck. She had forgotten the code word for her own personal communications network.

CODE WORD?

"Bobbit," she said, guessing.

PLEASE TRY AGAIN.

She had made it something difficult to remember, just in case of situations like this. She wasn't supposed to turn the damn things off, she knew. She was supposed to utilize them, as any other human being on the planet would do without a second thought, to get her either sober or out of this situation. She had, in the self-improving phase of her life just after prison (also the phase in which she had bought the TruthHertz clock), made an effort to get used to these damn machines.

As the desire to improve had worn off, so had her patience. Bit by bit she had ceased using them, relied on them less and less. They were, for the most part, just an irritating overlay interface on her vision that gave her the time and, for reasons she had never been able to understand, the price of soy stock in China.

But she hadn't been quite this drunk in a while. Not drunk enough to trigger the contact alarm.

CODE WORD?

"Elaine."

PLEASE TRY AGAIN.

CODE WORD?

"Fuck."

PLEASE TRY AGAIN.

Moll leaned against the toilet, gathering strength and patience from the cool porcelain. Outside the bathroom, whoever else she had just been drinking with was talking.

"Never believed in all this nanoware nonsense."

"Just a way for the government to make us easier to track--"

"Bullshit. It's real handy to have and you know it."

"Yeah it's real handy to have. Which makes me wonder why it's so cheap and why they're willing to give it to the poor on government funding. They made anything else real handy to have cheap? Like housing or food?"

"Tracking us like fucking pigs--"

"Pigs aren't this easy to track. Pigs would squeal like hell if you tried shooting 'em full of tiny machines."