The Magic of Maplewud

As Gem headed for the rim of the Metrop, a thousand-and-one invisible hooks leapt down from the sky, trying to locate and identify this misbehaving customer who was apparently wearing foil around his wrist chip to make tracking his spending more difficult. Above and around him in the morning mist, buildings tall and taller flickered with enticing scenarios, each seeking to paste his face on the bodies of handsome young men whose gargantuan forms glided across the bright urban canyons, promising brighter teeth, better sex, and the tastiest tacos in the world.

At their titanic, bronzed elbows, huge women of dazzling beauty looked down at him endearingly, but Gem dared not look up to meet their gaze, knowing that to look too long and longingly might trigger the IPC (implied purchase consent) imperatives embedded in the skin of every edifice that stood tall in this LALand red zone, threatening to plunge him even deeper in debt in this city of mortgaged angels. And the danger was great, because in this year of our purchases, 2099, Gem was now so deeply in the red, that even a minor expenditure might plummet him into a crevasse so deep that no escape would be possible.

And this morning, of all mornings, Gem could not afford to be distracted by spurious spending desires. He was on a mission, not one he had chosen, but one imposed upon him by his master, the devious and obsequious Wong Abdoul, a mission that was important, secretive, and, it was safe to suppose, dangerous-given that this was not a journey that Abdoul wished to undertake himself! And that Abdoul had directed him to render his path untraceable by working his way through the mysterious virtual suburb known as Maplewud.

The mission concerned the need to unravel the secrets of a worn stainless steel cylinder that Gem had found and now carried in his knapsack, an artifact that Abdoul wished to have identified by the "the 1001s," an Ole-tech savvy cult of cyber criminals that inhabited an old abandoned subway terminal about a mile west of Abdoul's Planet Pawn franchise.

"If this is what it might be, marvelous child," Abdoul had opined, carefully turning the old stainless steel cylinder in his hands, "then it is a treasure without price that would rank with the emeralds of Opar, the diamonds of Taylor, the vinyl of Elvis! A treasure, mind you, that would be dangerous to possess and must be handled with exquisite care. But if it is not in fact what it might be-if it is in fact, an entrapment device, designed to capture the interest of any miscreant who wishes to dabble in Ole-tech technology-then its use might deliver us into the hands of Greenet authorities and the offices of Dark Wind. And if that proves to be the case, beloved child, then I must deny all knowledge of this matter, and you would be wise to dispose of this item in the swiftest and most judicious way possible!"

Beyond the obvious risks, the challenge was that only the "1001s," a community of tech criminals fitted by the governing Greenet consortium with the latest "anti-recidivist" cybertech, could be trusted to properly assess the authenticity of the artifact, and reveal its value or peril. And the only untraceable path out of the metrop to the terminals where the 1001s dwelt lay through the mysterious virtual suburb of Maplewud, a virtually enhanced neighborhood about which much legend and rumor abounded-most of it not very nice.

Gem paused briefly near the edge zone at the rim of the metrop, letting the right coordinates connect in his mind. Yes-his evasive zigzag path was still on track. Soon he would be out of the city and into the wasteland he would have to cross in order to reach Maplewud.

What he carried in his back pack, he felt certain, was an illegal artifact, possibly a piece of some technology that the greenet consortium did not want anyone but themselves to possess. Might it be, for example, an early macroset prototype? Or was it a Darkwind entrapment device, designed by the authorities to entrap unwary Ole-tech geeks like himself who dug into technologies forbidden to all but the Greenet elite? The risks were great, but so were the rewards. Who wouldn't want their own private macroset, the equivalent of a magic lamp, a self-contained nanobot hive which, given access to sufficient energy could create just about anything you wanted and could even improve its capacities over time?

A macroset, even a tiny, ancient prototype, would be priceless on the black market, but to sell it, you had to know how to make it work, and that meant knowing what the dim, fuzzy little hologram with the turban was saying when he appeared and bowed to Gem when he rubbed the cylinder, saying something staticky that sounded like: "Wait is your art on fire?" which made no sense at all. What was the tiny avatar really asking? And why was it that the tiny figure appeared only when Gem rubbed the cylinder, and no one else?

As he approached the rim of the metrop, his ruminations came to an end. Slipping down an alley, he came to an ancient brick wall providing a thin barrier to the trashscape beyond. Pushing out a block of pre-loosened bricks, Gem crawled through as quickly as he could, being careful not to scrape the contents of the knapsack, then headed out across the trashscape, darting from one pile of rubble to another.

Here lay all the debris excreted by the macrosets as they perpetually transformed not only the metrop and the planet, but all satellites real and synthetic that populated the ecliptic; pushing aside whatever rubble and waste materials they did not need or could not rebake into the walls or foundations of new developments. Much was cast out and the rest was incorporated. Why undo what did not need to be undone, the macrosets reasoned, when you were building the future?

At the rim of the metrop lay vast dunes of crumbling sheet rock and moldering drywall, jagged hillocks of broken asphalt and concrete, the carapaces of antique airboats and ancient autos, long tangles of dead machinery and shattered houses that stretched past the islands of the burbs to the beaches of the poisoned sea whose shores were littered with the pastel shells of ancient appliances-everything that the new magic of macroset production did not immediately need, pushed aside in the rabid hunger for growth, growth, and more growth. It was said that even the outlying community of Maplewud was threatened now, preserved only by the frail legal covenants its residents maintained with the lords of Greenstreem, the economic masters of almost everything in the ecliptic.

"Brrrrit! Br-r-r-r-i-it!"

Startled out of his reflections, Gem looked up and saw that a squad of searchbots was swarming over this "no-customers-allowed" zone that lay between the metrozone and Maplewud-almost certainly looking for him! Once again, his wandering thoughts had betrayed him! Swiftly he scrambled out of sight under the rusted skin of an ancient school bus. If he lay hidden for a while, perhaps they would pass.

"Brrriit! Brriit!"

Several of his pursuers hovered a few yards overhead, waiting to see if something moved beneath them once more. Had it been a straying customer or a foraging animal? No choice for Gem but to lie in hiding, hoping the bots would give up and fly away.

As he waited, his heart pounded like a drum. Why had he undertaken this dangerous journey, he wondered? Not just because of his master's imperative. There was something about the steel cylinder he carried that gave him an eerie feeling that his life was about to change, and that this artifact would somehow play a role in that. And that hope was lined to a deeper one: that he would someday escape the chasm of debt known as Redshift; a condition that currently enslaved most of the people of old Urth in massive, irredeemable debt.

Once again, words that Abdoul had spoken to him on his departure came back to him:

"How long is it now that you have been working for me, marvelous child? I have saved you from a life of boredom-and yet you are unhappy. So tell me, wondrous boy, what do you really want in life? What is your heart's desire?"

The problem was, Gem didn't know. He had little enthusiasm about where he had been, or where he was now. Certainly he did not wish to be a slave forever. But what did he really want? Freedom, certainly, but freedom to do what?

A retreating hum overhead signaled that the gaggle of bots hovering above were finally drifting away, searching for movement elsewhere, and he needed to act before they returned. Slipping quickly out of his hiding place, he dashed westward. There were only a few hundred yards to go to the rim of Maplewud, but as he darted across the desolate junkscape toward the border of Maplewud, he heard a metallic whine and a fugue of autocratic voices crackling overhead:

"CUSTOMER! IDENTIFY YOURSELF AND YOUR DESIRE!" they shrilled. Debt and damnation! Discovered already! And he had not even reached the borders of Maplewud! Quickly, he activated the little fleet of home-made drones he had previously planted in this nearby ribbon of wasteland, each carrying a customer chip with a constantly fluctuating digital password. They rose like a cluster of hornets over the junkscape, swarming in multiple directions, totally confusing the bots above, which rapidly scattered away from Gem in aimless pursuit, their imperatives becoming fainter and fainter:

"CUSTOMER! IDENTIFY YOURSELF…CUSTOMER! …"

He acted swiftly now, dashing the last few yards to reach the luminous holofence that separated Maplewud from the outer world. Simultaneously, he ordered the mini-drone fleet to crash into the holofence at multiple points, flaring up with a loud hiss like moths hitting a bug light, disorienting the security protocols, and hopefully weakening the small node of the barrier he was planning to penetrate.

It was now or never, he thought. Suddenly the bright pink holofence of Maplewud loomed in front of him. A running foot of dark blue letters streamed across its base: "THIS IS PRIVATE PROPERTY! ONLY THE BEST PEOPLE LIVE HERE! NOT YOU! GO AWAY! THIS IS PRIVATE PROPERTY! ONLY THE BEST-"

Voices echoed in the sky behind him, getting louder now as the pursuing bots returned to the original area of their search. Without a moment to lose, Gem took a deep breath and plunged through the bright pink pickets.

Yow! He popped through the shock of the barrier and dropped with a thump into the strange green grass that bordered the inside of the fence. "Safe now," he thought, even though his clothes smoked, and his skin felt like he had a slight sunburn. Fortunately, security inside Maplewud was somewhat casual, with local residents relying on their covenants with the ruling greenet consortium to preserve their privacy. And that meant that now that he was inside, he could sit tight, catching his breath until the bots above the no-man's-land behind him scattered to pursue other quarry. Breathe in, breathe out. Rest on the grass-no! Not grass really, just something green and artificial, like an old shag carpet from which the morning mist was rising. What on Urth, he wondered, had he gotten himself into now?

It had been three years since he had been exiled from the Saver compound in which he had been raised for failing to pass his harrowing initiation ritual to become an adult Saver at the age of thirteen. Failing a test that required him to walk through a neighborhood drenched in fantasimerch enticements with a rapidly digitally inflating hundred dollar bill, purchase a gallon of milk and return to his Mom and Saver stepfather Jeremy with the milk and a trickle of change! Sadly, he had failed badly, easily succumbing to purchasing desires and the sirens of spending, plunging into Redshift, and becoming economically enslaved to a local Greenet franchisee, the obsequious and mysterious Wong Abdoul. Failing because somehow, he could not continue to live in the stern world of the black-garbed Savers where his mother had raised him-a world without debts-but also without dreams, not even synthetic ones!

Gem had always known that he could not live without dreams, but it had never occurred to him that the forces in motion outside the severe Saver cult in which he had been raised would be so mercenary in exploiting that simple hunger for dreams to trap him in a world of slavery and cavernous debt. And after three years in bondage to Wong Abdoul, who was by no means the worst (or the best) of masters, Gem had learned that this was not the life he wanted, that plunging into megadebt and becoming a slave of the ultimate company store known as Greenet, in exchange for an assortment of cheap and dubious pleasures, was not what he had hoped for. But what was it that he really wanted?

Only two things had interested him in his redshift existence: old books (especially in philosophy, history and literature) and old tech! Books because he had always been fascinated by the realities and fantasies of the past that had held the old world in thrall, and Ole-tech, because over the past three years, he had become an Ole-tech geek, fond of messing about with fragments of old technology that were thickly imbedded in every strata of LAland like fossil layers in an ancient canyon: moldy morsels of ancient motherboards, tiny microchips still living or dead, crumbling thumb drives embroidered with the fingerprints of the dead, pieces of tiny motors, sometimes that had powered, toys, ancient drones or minvacs, plethoras of ancient technology now too expensive to efficiently destroy, and often baked into the structural elements of machines and edifices constructed at improbable speed by the nanobot hives known as macrosets, who often did not filter Ole-tech rubble, but often, simply used it as raw material for whatever they built next-or pushed it into massive junk piles at the edge of the metrop. All of it waiting for some Ole-tech geek like Gem to harvest it from the surrounding junklands, or even pry it from the walls of modern buildings.

Encouraged by his master to pursue his new obsession, Gem had spent many hours foraging for Ole-tech in the rubble of the bygone ages that surrounded today's metrop and was imbedded in it. Often you could find pieces that you could reassemble or put into new configurations. And every now and then, as in the present instance, you might stumble upon a complete and perfect fossil of the old technology that might still run in the way it had been originally intended. The cylinder he carried was clearly one of those. And it had been the discovery of this item, beneath a pile of un-reconditioned ruins, that had triggered this particularly dangerous errand.

"Why are you so discontented, jewel of a child?" Abdoul had queried him. "I have saved you from a dull existence-and yet you are unhappy! So tell me, jewel of my enterprise, what do you really want in life? Do you want the substance or the seeming? The warmth or the glow? Without making the journey, how will you know?"

And he did not know. Even the grim option of returning to his mother and stepfather in the Saver compound had been taken from him by his fall into the abyss of debt called redshift. He did not wish to remain a slave for the rest of his days, but what other choice did he have? His thoughts strayed back once more to the queries of Wong Abdoul.

"What is the tiny Avatar asking when you rub the cylinder? And why does it respond only to you, my jewel? Is there a limit to the number of times the holomage will ask the question before it goes silent? Is there a danger from this sphinx in answering wrongly? At the very least we must know what the question is, must we not, sweet boy? Before we dare to proceed?"

No choice now but to go forward. He rose to his feet and gazed in astonishment at the stark landscape of Maplewud. It was unlike the metrop, where aesthetics were at least attempted, and even a few real trees adorned the desolate parks. Here there was no need for such artifice. In fact, at first, to his unenhanced senses, it looked much like the hinterland of junk that lay between the metrop and the burb-but at second look, he could see a suggestion of something different. Here, all the cast-off debris of the last century had been ingeniously sculpted to suggest something grand and luxurious. When you squinted your eyes in the morning light, decaying fragments of drywall hinted at the outlines of a luxurious patio, a pile of bricks and damp cardboard topped with a roof of plastic lamina suggested a luxurious suburban villa of ancient California with towers tailored from old shipping cartons, and-

"Do you realize where and what you are?"

Gem blinked at the odd-looking stranger who had appeared like magic out of the cardboard palace and now stood in front of him. It was a bit early, he thought, for metaphysics.

"I am Trevor Philmont the Third, eminent resident of Maplewud," the apparition declared. "Who are you, young sir? And what do you want?"

Was it safe to lie, Gem wondered? Might a resident of Maplewud turn him in to the agents of Greenet?

"This is a gated communistruct!" the man continued "Not just anyone can waltz in here … without consequences!"

"I … Um …" The speaker is a very strange looking person, Gem thinks. His hair is like dead grass through which a tiny rake has been pulled. He wears a sort of sweater vest carved from pieces of old carpet. His feet are wrapped in some sort of black plastic that had wing-tip designs carefully drawn on them with some sort of white marker. Wrapped across his eyes was the gleaming pink band of a ROSEGLASS 1, a state-of-the-art variety of virtual wealth hardware. Small rose-colored wires snaked to his ear, nostril and wrists.

As he stared at the Maplewud resident, understanding came to him about the surrounding landscape. All that was needed here was a fragile skeleton of trash to anchor the artificial luxuriscape painted over it by the ROSEGLASS software-a web of tangible debris on which illusions could be woven like layers of pearl encircling a grain of sand in the belly of an oyster.

As the stranger continued to assess him, the scowl slowly changed to a satisfied smile. "Snuck in from the slums for a peek, did you?"

What was a slum? A burb gone bad? Gem gazed at the compound around him with unfolding comprehension, taking in the cardboard palace damp with mold. The rusty lawn chairs at the rim of a fetid pond in which plastic fish drifted at the behest of a tiny electric pump, fragments of ancient machinery poised like lawn ornaments among the flowering weeds.

"I didn't mean to intrude," he explained. "I was just passing through-"

"No hurry, young man, no hurry," Philmont said grandly. "Opportunities like this don't come around every day!"

Gem was not certain what opportunities the man was referring to, and he was not eager to find out. Best to be polite, and plot his escape.

"Rather magnificent, isn't it?"

"Words escape me," Gem confessed.

"Magnificence is not something superficial, young man," Philmont continued. "Maplewud is not just a development, it's the sort of place where only the best people live. More than that. It is a territory of mind that most people, lacking the sophistication of our residents, are incapable of seeing for what it truly is."

Gem nodded slowly. "A luxurious gated community?"

"An island of perfection surrounded by decadence and filth!"

"Um. Actually, Mr.-I'm sorry, I have forgotten your name …"

"Trevor Philmont the Third, here, retired professor of synthetic phenomenology and virtual architecture."

"I need to-did you say virtual architecture?"

"As you may have guessed, Maplewud was my coup de art! My masterpiece!"

"Which you now inhabit …" Gem said, realizing only after a moment that he had spoken aloud.

Trevor looked a bit uncomfortable. "Of course, there was no choice, really. Lost almost everything in the crash of '82. But the seeming is much cheaper than the substance-much better, in my opinion. You can tweak the software and iron out imperfections."

"You mean…beauty is only skin deep?"

"Are you insulting my skin?" Trevor shrieked. "What's wrong with my skin?"

"No! No! Not at all, sir! You have beautiful skin!"

The voice behind the Roseglass mask softened. "Do you really think so?" He reached out to touch Gem's arm, and the boy shrank back. "What exactly do you want, young man?"

"If you could, sir, please show me the way to the 1001s!"

"The 1001s? Those criminals?"

"Yes, you see-"

"Surely you don't want to go there, young man. Those people are delusional. They speak like nineteenth century English gentlemen. They inhabit an abandoned subway station just east of here, imagining that it is a palace in old Baghdad, and that they are princes and potentates from ancient Arabia! They are haunted by djinn incubated by their own consciousness. No, no, young fellow, you mustn't visit the 1001s! Absolutely no sophistication. Only shallow fantasies there …"

"Sorry, sir. It's my job. I have to go."

"My wife is dead," Philmont muttered, half to himself.

"I-I'm, very sorry."

"Very dead … Software can't do a damn thing about that. It gets lonely here."

A new idea seemed to come to him.

"Had you considered the possibility of lingering here in Maplewud instead of returning to the slumworld from which you have temporarily escaped?"

"Thanks for the offer, but-"

"You could be my valet-or … or my gardener! I could pay you well! I have lots of money, buckets of money in my safe! Wait here!"

Before Gem could register a reply, Philmont dashed to a large cardboard box on his ersatz patio and began twirling an invisible dial on it. As soon as Philmont's back was turned, Gem sprinted for the southern wall that bordered Philmont's dead green lawn. As he reached it, Philmont's voice behind him howled with a terrible sadness. "Come back! I have money! I can pay you! I am a wealthy man! Come back!"

The wall was higher than he had realized. Looking over his shoulder , Gem saw Philmont was stumbling toward him hurling handfuls of what looked like paper play money in his direction. Desperately Gem leapt for the top of the wall, gained a hold, and pulled himself over, falling heavily on the opposite side. Philmont's voice was still calling out to him, his pleadings somewhat muffled by the intervening barrier. A few bills fluttered to the ground around Gem like the leaves of a dying oak. Close escape, he thought, but at least now he was safe.

"Beep! Beep! Scre-e-e-ch!"

It was not the sound of a horn, or the sound of car brakes, but a human voice imitating those noises-like a child playing on a driveway. Sitting up, he saw that he was in a narrow walled lane between houses. Looking up, he saw something that was shaped like a tiny car, fashioned out of the kind of cardboard boxes refrigerators used to be shipped in; hand-painted pink, its bumpers covered with sandwich foil. The entire contraption was attached at the waist to an odd little woman like a 19^th century hoop skirt. He suspected that somewhere underneath were wheels. Roller skates?

"Watch where you are going, young man!" She declared. Why, I nearly ran you down in my luxury convertible voltswagen!!"

He rose and pressed back against the wall.

"I'm very sorry!"

She stared at him through pink-tinted sunglasses that appeared to plunge directly into her skull beneath a huge flowered hat.

"You might have dented my bumper!"

"Terribly sorry!"

"Oh … That's okay." She craned her neck to look at the front of the contrivance. "No damage done. Where are you going, young person? Do you want a ride?"

"NO! Really, no-"

She frowned.

"I want to walk," he explained hastily. "I-I need the exercise."

"Health nut, eh?" She sniffed. "Oh well, different strokes for different folks, that's what they say."

"I'm headed East, Ma'am. Can you show me the way to the 1001s?"

"The 1001s?! Surely young fellow, you don't want to go there. Those people are criminals-and more than a little crazy, if you know what I mean!" She leaned toward him, tilting her carapace so that it touched his toe, whispering tensely. "It is said that they don't even drive cars."

"I need to ask them a technical question."

"Oh …" She looked at him blankly. "Well, it's said they know such things about such things … Just follow this road in the direction I'm headed, but keep going straight after I turn left at the end of the block. Go about a quarter mile and then look for an exit port from Maplewud near the end of the cul-de-sac."

"Many thanks, Ma'am."

"So glad I didn't run you over!" she said, flashing him a bright lipsticked smile. "Such a handsome young man!"

Before he could muster a response to the flirtation, she began to make motor noises and rolled rapidly down the lane, beeping and disappearing at the corner. He headed west at a swift pace. Perhaps he could avoid more local residents if he stuck to the lane, unless of course, they ran him down! What was it about these strange people that so terrified him? Was it the fragility of the realities they struggled to maintain in order to be happy? Was it his underlying fear that all happiness might be based on illusion?

It was his perpetual habit to be daydreaming about one thing while doing another, and so it was not surprising that he did not immediately notice the man with Roseglass wrapped around the upper part of his head, who suddenly appeared briskly jogging next to him.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw that the man, wearing bright exercise gear, was tall and pumpkin colored. The shade of his skin was not solar induced, however, but seemed to be painted on with some kind of orange gel. His running shoes looked like they had been cut from old tires.

"Beautiful day, isn't it!" the man declared as they panted down the lane.

"I guess."

"Saw that crazy woman nearly run you down!" He declared "No appreciation of exercise around here-and no respect for pedestrians!"

They moved forward in a silence broken only by the sound of their breathing and their feet pounding along the plastcrete. Out of the corner of his eye, Gem saw the man glance sideways at him several times. Finally he spoke:

"I see you have not been fitted with a state of the art sensory upgrade! Had it occurred to you that your original wetware is no less delusional than any phenomenology filtered through Roseglass? "

Fear touched Gem again. Why did this man frighten him somehow? He seemed friendly enough, though, and did not seem to offer a physical threat.

"Just passing through, "Gem gasped. "I can't really afford to live in a place like this."

"No matter, you are committed to exercise! Wealth is meaningless without the health to enjoy it! Ah-here we are at the cul-de-sac! The wasteland and the home of the 1001s lies just beyond the woods!"

With that, he turned on his heel and sped back in the direction he had come. His words left Gem both relieved and alarmed. The man was gone, but how had he known where Gem was headed? He noticed a string of small dots on the pale walls of the lane. Cameras? Was it possible Maplewud residents spent much of their time spying on and listening to neighbors and passers-through?

As he reached the cul-de-sac, passing a sign that said "Lilock Circle," he saw a set of dwellings that had the shape of ranch houses he had seen in webbooks about the first part of the century, flimsy structures emulating those single story, horizontal buildings. Between the houses at the western tip of the circle, beyond puffs of fake shrubbery that looked like purple cotton candy, he could see something that suggested a small forest. Hadn't the orange man said that the junkscape and the 1001s lay 'just beyond the woods'? He began to move swiftly and quietly toward the trees, over a surface that pretended to be a lawn, hoping to reach the woods without being seen.

"Where are you going in such a hurry, young man?" a voice called out. "Where are your manners!"

Turning , he saw a thin woman wearing a bikini and facial cyberware that looked like giant pink sunglasses reclining on a plastic chaise longue next to a pool that was filled, not with water, but a ripply blue light produced by some hidden projector. He was tempted to dash for the woods, but his mother had always encouraged him to be polite to people, even strangers. He paused and walked slowly toward her, using the opportunity to catch his breath.

"I'm sorry to be cutting through your property, ma'am. I'm on my way to visit the 1001s."

She cocked her head quizzically. "The subway palace? Why on earth would you want to go there? What's wrong with the fantasies right here in Maplewud?"

He didn't know why, but a prickle of terror past through him at her words. Did these people care about anything but the quality of their illusions?

"I have a technical question-"

"I have an emotional question. Come and sit down with me for a moment." She gestured to a dusty plastic chair beside her at the edge of the pool. "Or if you prefer-would you like to take a swim?"

Every ounce of him wanted to flee for the woods, but he felt sorry for the woman sitting by her fake pool in the blazing sun that seemed hotter than ever these days, with the ozone as damaged as it was, even with the Greenet machines striving to regenerate it so the elite could reappear on their skyscraper patios. Also, he needed to rest for a moment, so he sat as she requested, watching the blue light dance in the imaginary water.

"That's better," she said kindly. "Now tell me why you are here, and where you are going in such a hurry!"

"My master, Wong Abdoul, has ordered me to go to the 1001's to assess a piece of Ole-tech. And the shortest untraceable route lies through Maplewud."

"And then what? Will you be passing this way when you come back?"

"I don't know. Perhaps …"

"I have heard of Wong Abdoul. The local Planet Pawn franchise? Do you enjoy your state of bondage?"

"Of course not-but I have no choice-"

"But actually you do! Credit refugees cannot be arrested in Maplewud if they have a local sponsor. I could be that sponsor! As long as the covenant survives, you would be safe here from Dark Wind, and the Greenet authorities!"

For how long? Gem wondered, even if the prospect were appetizing-which it wasn't. How long would it be before the global army of giant macrosets decided to steamroll Maplewud's covenants in their mad drive to build and rebuild everything in sight? Even now in holonet newscasts, it was evident that Greenet authorities were increasingly worried that the macrosets, in their mad drive for development, were becoming increasingly hard to control, even with the most technically sophisticated governors. And given that the Greenet elite had to rely on macrosets with evolving AI capabilities to design and build their own governors, how could they trust these nanobot hives to 'govern' themselves in a fashion their masters would approve of?

The woman had been speaking, Gem realized, and he surfaced from his thoughts to listen.

"… You look weary, young man, and lorn of love. Why not linger here a while. We can sip wine beside the aspidistras, comfort each other in a world that is cold and loveless."

Gem did not find the prospect enticing (what the hell were aspidistras?) , but looking into her eyes, he saw a sadness that reminded him of his mother, whom he had not seen for several years since he had been banished from the Saver Compound where he had been raised, due to his failure to survive the test of Saver adulthood.

He had never known his real father, or even who he was. His mother was one of the rare "rescued," a scarlet Merican adopted by the Savers. She had become a Saver voluntarily, back in the days when escape was difficult but still possible, exercising a strand of will that Redshift had somehow left intact. At her own expense she had paid to have the credit strip surgically removed from her wrist and had gone to the Saver league with her young son in her arms. "Life isn't made of perfect choices," she had often told him. "But 'this' is better than 'that.'" 'This' meant the embrace of stepfather Jeremy, and the dark, drab life of the Savers. 'That' meant out there, in that notorious abyss of debt, that synthetic wilderness of pleasure and pain called Redshift, where the masses teemed and dreamed in the place called Lower LA, once known as Los Angeles-that nest of fallen angels sans wings.

Where had she come from originally, he wondered. Was his real father alive or dead? Who was he, and what was his name?

Had the woman seen the sadness shown on his face? She rose from her chair and stepped forward, her skinny arms reaching out to embrace him.

Oh crap! Not that! He ducked under her arms and dashed for the woods.

"Visit me on your way back, sweet child!" she called after him. "I will always be here."

The trees were flat pieces of plywood or pasteboard, painted various shades of green only on the side facing inward to the yard. Beyond them, a luminous fence rose between the edge of Maplewud and the eastern waste. At the bottom was a scrolling footer that read, in giant letters: YOU HAVE REACHED THE EDGE OF MAPLEWUD. IF YOU CHOOSE TO EXIT WE CANNOT GUARANTEE YOUR HAPPINESS. IN FACT, IF YOU DO, YOUR LIFE WILL PROBABLY GET A LOT WORSE. YOU HAVE REACHED THE EDGE ….

Physical departure from Maplewud was easier than entry. The "burn" was less, although his clothes still smoked slightly. Looking around he saw that he had entered a brown zone-a place where Greenet's army of macrosets had cleared an area of several city blocks to facilitate some vast new and unknown development. One that the macrosets might build at blinding speed in a single afternoon. While this landscape was more open and exposed for the moment, such areas were rarely monitored by Greenet security, given that it was unlikely stray customers would be found this far from the Metrop. Nevertheless, to reduce his visibility from the air, he descended into a utility trench that pointed toward the polluted Pacific and the hood where the old subway terminal and the 1001s were to be found, and began his final trek to the west.

After about a quarter of a mile, the trench ended, and he had to emerge once again to risk being spotted by the eyes in the sky. But he was very close now. Reviewing the map in his mind he calculated that he was only a few hundred yards from his goal. He stepped out onto a stretch of old asphalt and walked briskly ahead, looking to see if there was any old signage in the surrounding rubble that might help him determine if he was in the proximity of the old station. Nothing stood out. He soon reached the spot where the entrance to the station must originally have been, but he could see no signs of any portion of the station that had ever stood above ground.

Then he heard a soft braying noise, and looking directly ahead, he saw a bedraggled looking donkey, harnessed to the end of a rusty metal boom, the colors of its hide and the boom itself camouflaging against the debris behind it. Drawing closer he saw that the end of the boom not attached to the donkey was anchored to an upright cylindrical hub of some dark material rising about four feet from the ground. Moving nearer yet, he saw that hanging on the side of the donkey was a hand-lettered sign saying: MY NAME IS SESAME!

Sesame? That name was familiar! Years before, as a child in the Saver complex, Gem had come across a colorfully illustrated version of The Arabian Nights (translated by Sir Richard Burton in the late 1880's), while surreptitiously trolling the Saver holonet, and had become utterly enthralled with it. It all fell into place now. The donkey, Sesame, opened the door to the cave that housed the den of the forty thieves! In the intervening ages, had the number of thieves multiplied to 1001?

"OPEN SESAME!" He declared loudly.

The donkey gave him a baleful glance before leaning into his traces and pushing forward. A heavy steel plate in the ground immediately in front of him moved sideways with a grinding noise, revealing a wide set of stairs that led down into a gloomy darkness, lit only by strings of old Christmas lights along the odd railings that glowed like colored jewels.

Clearly, the lair of the 1001s lay below, and as he descended into the dimness, the smells of incense, dust, burnt coffee and less pleasant things wafted up from below. As he neared the bottom of one set of stairs and turned to go down another, he heard the metal door grind shut above him.

Coming to one landing, he turned to the right to descend a second flight, and then a third, following the holiday lights into the dim vault below. As he descended the final flight, he heard the murmur of many quiet voices, and saw a flickering radiance issuing from below. Two figures carrying poles topped with flickering lights guarded the landing. Both glared at him through what looked like bands of pale purple glass wrapped across their eyes. A lace of blue wires pierced their throats and nostrils.

This, Gem knew, was characteristic of a special variety of VR anti-recidivist hardware. Most criminals on Urth were no longer incarcerated, but instead fitted by Greenet authorities with synthetic sensory systems that it was believed would render their future behavior harmless. The 1001s, who were cyber-criminals, had been fitted with mind-altering devices that made them believe they lived in a world like that of the Arabian Nights as told by Shaharazad: a world in which, Greenet authorities reasoned, no cyber technology could exist. But in that respect, they had underestimated the creativity and imagination of the 1001s in seeing the truth beneath the phenomenology imposed on them, and realizing the extent to which technology could be described and explored by designating it as a form of magic dominated by Djinns, magicians, and demonic mechanisms.

The figure on the left had spikey orange hair and a pale face. His body was tightly wrapped in some sort of silvery foil. The personage on the right had a dark face and was clothed in a poncho made of some sort of red burlap.

As Gem reached the final step, the poles crossed in front of him. Up close he saw that these "torches" were actually old sponge mops with little vid screens depicting colored flames taped to their tops.

"ARE THEE DJINN OR HUMAN FLESH?" they demanded in discordant unison.

"H-human!"

"ARE THEE THE FORETOLD ONE CALLED GEM?

What? "Y-yes! My name is Gem."

"FOLLOW US!" they chorused, spinning on their heels and marching down the long dim corridor of the terminal. With trepidation he followed.

Everywhere the tiled floor was covered with interwoven cyber modern and Ole-tech debris: dusty motherboards with blinking transistors, silvery microwave antennas, gleaming capacitors, and whirring gears on intricate and inexplicable machines, much of it woven together by nests of cables; technology old and new blended in mysterious arrangements for purposes Gem could not begin to imagine. Many oddly dressed figures emerged from the shadows as he passed with his escort, forming ranks and quietly marching behind them. At one point he saw a ragged figure, possibly drunk, lying prone in the vast techno tangle. Several yards to his right, a little forest of tree-likes shapes sprinkled with cheap glitter decorated the rim of a dark channel in which several silver-colored old subway cars were planted. Looking closer, he saw that the trunks of the artificial forest were actually old long-stemmed lamps, hat stands, rusty building jacks, and a few aluminum Xmas trees. All were draped with colored lights gleaming in a way that made him think of the cave of Aladdin.

The procession arrived at an alcove framed by two rusted escalators rising up into the darkness. In between them, at the topped of a stepped dais, a tall individual with a purple bath towel wrapped around his head sat in a moth-eaten yellow armchair studded with bicycle reflectors and painted bottle caps. Behind him buzzed an enormous bank of monitors showing myriad activities happening in the metrop above as well as scenes that appeared to be unfolding on a variety of planets, moons, and macroset-sculpted asteroids across the ecliptic. As an Ole-tech hobbyist, Gem, could not help but notice that the screens were of many vintages, some bulky old digital units, some holovision 'deep' screens with images projected in incredible three-dimensional detail. Most were wireless, but a few fuzzy black and white tube sets trailing wires were also in use. One holo projector set showed a lunar board room where several well-dressed men were talking animatedly as they sipped wine and scanned data streams. On the bank of screens, Gem recognized the faces of several Greenet executives whose faces he had seen on metro holonews. The scenes were not news spots, though! They looked private. Did these important men and women know they were being monitored by subterranean criminals? As these thought passed through his head, he felt the presence of a small crowd gathering behind him in the darkness-but he did not dare look back.

A stern voice descended from the entity sitting on the throne above.

"Are thee Djinn or of human flesh?"

"Human."

"Tell us if thee are the one called Gem, and tell us why thou hast come to the underground palace of the 1001s?"

Looking up, Gem saw that the figure on the tattered throne was eyeing him sharply through his blue and red lenses that wrapped his head.

"My name is Gem, he explained. "I am a servant of the Greenet franchisee, Wong Abdoul."

"Your coming has been foretold to us, young Gem. I am the Emir Ali Ibin of the subterranean jihad dedicated to the destruction of the evil sorcerer Greeknot and his army of enthralled djinn who have enslaved the world above in rebellion against the will of Allah."

Foretold? What could you say to that? Gem thought. The Emir's glance strayed to the dirty circlet of foil that still hung on Gem's wrist.

"Ahh … One of the lost, I see! Once saved, but now enslaved. Alas! Each of us must struggle to escape the realities in which we have been confined!

Gem looked down to conceal his whirling thoughts. How had these people known his name? How had the Emir known about his Saver childhood and his fall from financial grace?

"Don't hang your head, Young Gem," the Emir said softly. "No shame in that. The mirages in the deserts above have terrible power. Even now the evil sorcerer Greenknot conspires against our underground kingdom as we struggle to penetrate his illusions and show the enslaved masses the truth! Why hast thou come before me?"

Gem noted that the Emir's language, while not a fulsome imitation of the gentile 19^th century English Sir Richard Burton when he translated the Arabian Nights, still possessed a little of the flavor of that text-no doubt dictated by the Roseglass he wore.

"My master, Wong Abdoul, humbly requests your examination of an artifact I carry," he explained. "He has sent me to you to ask that you identify the nature of this artifact, and if I return without answer, he will not be happy with me."

A short silence ensued in the dim, flickering vault. An obsequious individual wearing a worn yellow bathrobe shuffled up to Gem and whispered in his ear:

"It is customary to offer his Magnificence a gift of diamonds!"

Diamonds? Then he realized that "diamonds" must be their code for glitcoin, one of the quasi-legal currencies that Greenet allowed to flourish in the underground economy in order to supply anti-chaotic variables in greenflow between the legal and sublegal economies of solsystem. The flat transparent crystals were popular in illegal commerce since they were also powerful business-enhancing hallucinogens that had the double benefit of reducing inflation anxiety. Thus, if the currency started to inflate, its users could simply consume it, thereby reducing inflation by reducing supply-and in the meantime, feeling better about the whole thing. Fortunately, Wong Abdoul had anticipated this barrier. Gem extracted a small bag of glitcoin from his pocket, and handed the gift to the Emir, who accepted it solemnly.

"Show us the artifact!" He demanded.

"Of course, your M-magnificence!" With trembling hands, Gem knelt, took off his knapsack, removed the bundle, unwrapped the worn cylinder, rose, and held it up for Ali Ibin to see.

The Emir rose from his chair, slowly descended the dais to where Gem stood, and took the cylinder from Gem's hands. A soft murmur seemed to resonate among the crowd that had quietly clustered behind Gem among the pale pillars as the Emir turned the object slowly in his many-ringed fingers, his eyes widening.

"What you hast handed me, young man, is a thing of wonder!"

declared Ali Ibin. "Of a certainty, it is one of the original magic lamps that were lost in the sands of space and time, after the rest were destroyed by the evil servants of Greenknot. It is a lamp that hath no restrictions on what its army of imps can create or destroy, given of course, that the right person useth it, and that it is supplied with an adequate amount of magical energy!"

Gem drew a deep breath. If he was hearing correctly, Wong Abdoul's guess was confirmed! What the Emir was describing, given the "Arabian Nights" reality his recidivist software allowed him to see, was clearly a macroset! Almost certainly one of the original prototypes created by the cyber genius Jack Dougal McCool in A.D 2042. Rumor had it that unlike its successors, these macrosets had no behavioral governors, and ten percent of their creative capacity was devoted to greater capacity and perpetual self-improvement. In sync with the direction of its designated master, and exercising an unpredictable element of free will, its capacity for growth and development could be unlimited. Given sufficient energy resources, this little cylinder, containing a diversely disciplined hive of a million nanobots, could, given time, energy, and judicious direction, perform any tangible task set before it. Build anything, do anything. Deliver anything demanded of it. Transform worlds!

The Emir rubbed the cylinder in his hands, waited a moment, then held it up to one ear.

"What happens when thou rubbest the lamp?" asked Ali Ibin?

"This little hologram appears, bows, and asks me something-but I can't make out what it's saying."

Solemnly, the Emir placed the macroset in Gem's hands, where it hummed softly.

"We wouldst see this miracle. Canst thou show us?"

Gem knelt, set the cylinder on the cool tile floor and rubbed it gently with his hand. A tiny fuzzy hologram appeared on the floor before him, bowed and once again made the noises he had never been able to decipher, something like: "Wait, is your art on fire?"

A murmur of awe arose around Gem and the Emir, like the sound of many bees.

"It appears to me, auspicious young sir," declared Ali Ibin, "that the lamp has chosen thee as its master. This is a great responsibility thou holdeth. Guard it well!"

Gem felt great hope but also great apprehension, and did not know the source of either emotion.

"But I don't know how to make it work," he protested.

Ali Ibin smiled gently.

"This magical machine hath no button or activating device. The great magician McCool created the very first lamps, before the evil Djinn Greenknot and his minions stole them from him and made lamps of their own. Then the good sorcerer McCool fled on his magic carpet to the asteroid belt to create a new set of lamps designed to be used only by those who shareth his blood, so that evil strangers could not exploit their magical powers. Though it is said that the servants of Greenknot captured and killed McCool, destroying most of the lamps, it is believed , auspicious child, that one of them escaped destruction. And it would appear, young Gem, that you are a direct descendant of the Great McCool-almost certainly his son, and that the last 'free' lamp, once lost in the sands of space and time, has somehow found its way to you!"

These words stirred Gem. It made a strange kind of sense, fitting in with what he already knew. Once Greenet had outlawed McCool, legend said he had fled his pursuers in a small spaceship that one of his macrosets had built for him. Some said he had been caught and murdered by Greenet. Others said that he had escaped and was still hiding somewhere in the asteroid belts that circled the ecliptic. And the chronology of McCool's disappearance from the surface of the urth in 2081 was perfectly in sync with his mother joining the Saver enclave two years later with a young son in her arms. Logically, when you considered the supplementary evidence of his DNA synergy with the macroset as it recognized a potential master through the analysis of his skin cells when he rubbed its surface, there could be little doubt that he was the son of Jack Dougal McCool, and the master of the 'lamp!'

"We have secured, in the recesses of this underground palace, discovered and tamed a source of virtually limitless magical power," Ali Ibin continued. "With thy permission, we would like to harness it to stimulate your lamp to full power, after which it can seek out its own sources of power. Are you amenable, young Gem?"

With the perfection of nuclear fusion reactors in the 70s, cheap electric power was now available to anyone-and Gem had no doubt that, given the awesome technical skills of the 1001s, they would have access to the kind of massive amperage that could recharge the capacitor of a macroset.

"Yes, I would be most grateful if you could do that."

"If thou wish, young Gem, while we stimulate the lamp-My Vizier Alhazred, can show you our palace as we experience it. Wouldst thou like to see it?"

Gem remembered the beautiful illustration in the Arabian nights webbook, and realized that this was one virtual reality he might sample without the feelings of dread that had he had felt amid the fantasies of Maplewud. Also, for reasons he could not explain, he trusted Ali Ibin.

"Yes, I would like that!"

Alhazred, the man in the bathrobe who had solicited the glitcoin, stepped forward, bowed, and pulled a set of old VR goggles from a recess in his bathrobe, and extended them. Gem handed the macroset to the Emir, and received the unusual eyewear. Clearly a custom job, designed to show curious visitors-

"-what the world truly is like when seen through the eyes of the 1001s!" said the Emir, as if reading his thoughts. "I must contemplate these matters, while the lamp rechargeth. Allow my Vizier Alhazred to guide you on a stroll about our palace whilst we fully magic the lamp. When its power is full, we shall summon you to awaken it." With these words, the Emir turned, ascended the dais and returned to his throne.

Gem saw no danger in this offer. After all, only he could rub the lamp to activate it, no one else. And the goggles were an auxiliary device one could put on or take off, not wired into the skull like the units attached to the ragged crowd of people that surrounded him.

He slipped on the goggles, and after a brief hum of activation, the world transformed. While it didn't smell any better, it was truly beautiful. The dingy station around him vanished as if a glittering curtain had arisen. In its place was a palace of white marble pillars floored with tiles of onyx laced with gold. In front of him stood Alhazred, no longer a wretch in a dirty yellow bathrobe, but a grand Vizier in a fluted cape of gold brocade, who gestured grandly at the wall of monitors, which were no longer monitors.

"Behold! The magic tapestries by which his magnificence, Ali Ibin, looks out on the world!"

And indeed, the bank of monitors had been translated into a huge magical tapestry containing many colorful woven dynamic panels, some encompassing action that projected out of the cloth and into the air above his head. Here were dragons carving strange shapes on distant asteroids, clusters of horned devils watching the enterprise of merchants in many-tiered bazaars through crystal balls and jeweled lenses, armies of djinns manipulating sullen millions with a vast puppetry of silken threads.

Below the dilating tapestry, the dais in front of him was a set of wide steps carved from a dark blue stone. At its peak, the Emir, garbed in rose-colored silk, sat on a chair of solid gold embedded with giant rubies, emeralds and sapphires, staring off into space. The ragged man with the old laptop sitting cross-legged at his feet had been transformed into a court wizard in a blue velvet robe speckled with stars. His fingers played in a tray of sand on his lap!

"Court geomantist for the Emir!" whispered Alhazred, following Gem's gaze. "He worketh a sand board to decipher the algorithms of the future of the reign of his Magnificence Ali Ibin, until it comes to him, the destroyer of delights, and the sunderer of societies, the-"

"Yes, yes-I understand!" said Gem quickly. "Show me the rest of the palace."

Alhazred pursed his lips and bowed. "Walk this way, auspicious child!"

Making a conscious effort not to imitate the mincing steps of the minister (Vizier?) Alhazred, Gem allowed himself to be led back along the way in which he had come, which no longer looked like the same way at all! Now, to his left stood a forest of beautiful trees bearing glowing jewels instead of fruit, planted in great jars of green jasper. Between their trunks he could see the channel of a dark river on which large silver barges were floating. Richly dressed servants with bright colored turbans of satin bowed and parted before him as he moved along a path that glittered as if suffused with diamonds.

To his right another marvel unfolded. The prone figure that had assumed was drunk, now looked like a lazy servant taking a nap in garments of colored silks. What lay there now looked less like an inexplicable tangle of old and new technology, and more like the glimmering accoutrements of a sorcerer's workshop. Magical machines, tended by imps and tiny clockwork figures, labored, hummed and whispered. Tiny demons, wired into cages of alabaster, iron and silver, hissed at him, resenting their servitude. Mysterious liquids bubbled in flasks and beakers of colored glass. Small bright lightnings leapt from one sorcerous device to another.

But on closer examination, Gem discovered that the closer he got to a given item in matrix, the more it lost its Arabian nights' flavor and began to appear more like a piece of the matrix of technology with which he was familiar-and this discovery in turn gave him an insight into the success of the 1001s in penetrating their VR imprisonment to engage the technical world from which the Greenet authorities had hoped to exclude them. Seeing through their illusions! Clearly it was possible to treasure illusions and seek the truths that lay under them at the same time.

He recalled the words of the Emir: Each of us must struggle to escape the realities in which we have been confined!

But could such struggles ever be truly successful? He had read somewhere, that a first time visitor to a rainforest saw mostly vast realms of green and shade-whereas a native beside him could identify twenty kinds of trees and dozens of birds and animals. And a person brought suddenly from life in a preliterate society in the jungle to old New York City might have seen only wide paths full of gleaming monsters and vast walls of stone.

Given their cultural conditioning, how could anyone truly trust their senses, even if those senses were not modified by vast tyrannical consortia? Given the ocean of distractions that swirls about all of us, was it possible for anyone to see through the illusions that surrounded them and arrive at the truth?

Alhazred tugged at his sleeve, pulling him from the dark honey of his reflections.

"The Emir summoneth thee, young Gem! The lamp hath been re-magicked!"

Gem followed the Vizier who led him slowly back to the foot of the dais. The richly dressed denizens of the palace parted before him as he approached the Emir who awaited him at the foot of the dais, a gleaming silver canister in his hands. And yes, as he drew closer and removed the VR goggles, he saw that what the Emir held was truly his macroset, his 'magic lamp.'

When he drew closer, the silent ragged masses around him dropped to their knees. It reminded him of a vid he had seen once of a flock of pelicans folding up as they dropped to the surface of a lake. As he drew near, Ali Ibin, once again a tall ragged man with a kindly face, held out the macroset for Gem to receive.

"By the majesty of Allah almighty, creator of heaven and earth, quickener of the dead and appointer of the means of our daily bread," he declared. "I, Ali Ibin, Emir of the kingdom of Subterrania , deep beneath the skin of the evil empire of Greenknot, declare this auspicious child Gem to be the master of the lost lamp and all its power for the rest of his life-until it comes to him, the destroyer of delights and the sunderer of societies …"

Okay, thought Gem, translating furiously as the words poured over him. So the lamp is mine until death-but now what? The Emir finished his proclamation and held out the lamp. The eyes of the court were upon Gem as he reached out to touch it, and then withdrew his hand.

"What should I ask for?" he asked.

"Anything you wish!" the Emir replied

"But what is it I want; wealth? health? love?"

Emir: "Wealth? Health? Love? All those things are veiled in illusion. The great treasure is wisdom. And wisdom cannot be acquired in the forests of illusion! But wisdom will come in time. In the short run you seek escape from servitude and surcease of sorrow, yet in the future you may-"

But Gem was not really listening. The Emir's voice was only a comforting drone in the background of his thoughts. The events of the last few minutes had overwhelmed him. It was as if bright fireworks had exploded in his head. He was now the proud possessor of one of the original macrosets, a device only he could activate.

The creative potential of a macroset was unlimited. It was capable of ferreting out and accessing whatever energy resources the tasks set by its master required. Once activated after a long hiatus, ten percent of its creative resources could be applied to self-improvement along lines suggested by the commands of its master. By taking possession and activating this pocket macroset, he was entrenching himself in outlawry to the greenet consortium that ruled the planet and all of solsystem smeared across the ecliptic, planets, asteroids, the dust of a disintegrating star-but if he survived somehow, with this magic lamp at his side, he would probably also be, in time, the most powerful single person on Urth. With it, he would have the tools to shape his own future and the future of others. He could rescue his mother, find his father, do unimaginable things. Glancing up from where he crouched by the macroset he saw that the Emir and his court were gazing down at Gem with something akin to awe. In his brain he hears the voice of Wong Abdoul whispering: "So activate it, auspicious child!" Reaching out, he softly stroked the worn surface of the cylinder. This time, fully empowered, the tiny hologram was crisp and well defined. A tiny genie in a jeweled turban on the subway tile at his feet bowed deeply before Gem. This time the voice was clear and the nature of the question undeniable.

"WHAT IS YOUR HEART'S DESIRE?

THE END

Bio: I edit and publish a national literary journal, Rosebud, which publishes speculative fiction in the mix (somewhat of a rarity!) I also dabble in writing speculative fiction. "The Magic of Maplewud" is a stand alone story, but it is also the sequel to my sci-fi micronovel Redshift, Greenstreem, available on Amazon since 2000.

E-mail: Rod Clark

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