UbiquiCity 2: Undercurrents

By Tod Foley

Beneath the smartglass towers, hovering drones and digital advertisements of Union City's corporate elite, life on the streets follows its own cyber-organic rhythms...

» Powerful corporations fight wars through proxies, and digital reality is the battlefield

» Scrumblies and Discons do what it takes to survive in the streets and squatter towns

» Investigators and their AI assistants pursue leads through worlds both real and virtual

...and every day, myths and tragedies are played out in digital realms of which most are unaware.

Return to the city of ubiquitous computing, and learn how the other half lives.

Stories by Irene Bassett, Brad Cole, D.M. Dore, Jens Durke, S.L. Koch, G. Dean Manuel, Adrian McCauley and Rick Rosenkranz paint a collaborative picture of our augmented future world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tod Foley
• Release date: Jan 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9781733576925

Book preview

Dork Knights of Harohbakh

by S. L. Koch

Your poison shall soil this valley no longer!

The cloaked figure moved through a crowd of armored green orks, his blade clipping the ankles of the smallest marauder, longsword gleaming in fluid motion, thrusting through collapsing lungs, swinging up in arc after arc of fresh entrails until it came down mercilessly to stake a corpse to the soil. His brethren orks had no time to react as a flood of arrows followed the figure, silent whispers of murder, impaling each—

Excuse me, can I help you kids? the store clerk said, watching four young adults swing their arms wildly about the store. In one sight, the man was a linen bound merchant in some quaint tailor shop, his fantasy clothes glowing ghostly bright. In reality, he was just a moody kid with his first job in a mall store.

Harohbakh offered a premiere grade, immersive, AR fantasy world. Retro was fashionable these days, so the designers had modeled the game on ancient tabletop dice games. Those who once huddled around tables chucking dice in dark basements now bumbled around in public, their books and miniatures replaced by augmented projections that mapped the fantasy game around real, everyday objects. It was only one of thousands of digital distractions available in the eMarkets, each conveniently masking the hubris of mundanity; an app with over three hundred million subscribers, though most people only ever played with close friends. Only dorks flailed around in Harohbakh in public. But at least they were dorks together.

Rhett stopped, cycling off the AR overlay to look at the clerk with reality. The worst filter of all. "Oh god, I'm sorry. Hey guys, we're in a store."

They all groaned and cycled off their overlays.

Sure, fielding AR wasn’t super immersive like VR. VR had nice full-body haptic suits where you could lose touch with reality and get absorbed in the digital experience. AR was like more like hallucinating. It was like seeing halos on everything, like fuzzy auras, but it didn’t block out the world. Not properly. They were aware of objects, of things around them. Assistant apps and proximity alerts kept them from getting pasted by cars or falling off railings. But even so, a sort of AR immersion could be achieved: turn up the colors, seal the earplugs, and use the aroma attachment noseclip (that only one of them could afford), and you could seclude yourself from reality.

It was just enough to touch imagination itself, yet beneath the semi-transparent projections, the real world always scowled below.

Where'd we stumble to now? Juniper looked up, emerging from the dream of their fantasy app, the illusory world crumbling in collapsing triangles to reveal the reality beneath. Oh lordy. Women's naughty bits?

Good grief. A lingerie display.

The clerk seemed patient with them but as he tapped his dress shoe, it grew obvious he would not remain so for long. The store specialized in lingerie and nightwear coordination, where clerks helped design entire specialized wardrobe selections for all sorts of implied activities. Many naughty bits were on display here, barely hidden beneath silk and mesh.

Buying? the clerk asked.

Each product glimmered, cycling through mini-holo price tags that auto-adjusted themselves to economic standards, pop-ups listing the details of each product, its origin, and similar items users had purchased alongside them, as well as other products in the line. High end underwear. High end price tag projectors. Such evocative displays had no place in Harohbakh. Such unbecoming dress for noble knights? Bah!

Besides, there were no real clothes in these stores; just fuzzy glowing projections. The store licensed blueprints, and the clothes were printed while you waited. In a world where designs were easy to copy, taste and coordination defined the most lucrative of reputations. Quality mattered, style dominated.

Meeps grabbed Rhett and Juniper, ushering them toward the door.

Even outside the vast plains of Harohbakh, Meeps never truly looked like the skinny kid underneath. Even outside the game he remained aug masked with a cute super avatar in the form of a deformed anthropomorphic zebra. The zebra was not a cheap gimmick, it was his true self, his fursona, his call sign on every social account. It WAS a fetish thing and he was unabashedly proud. At one time he'd even 3D-printed somewhat socially unsettling prosthetics to dress up like a zebra at cons, but even among others in the community, the prosthetics had been a little too uncanny valley for comfort. Didn’t matter, he decided. He was always Meeps on the inside. In one night of somber drug-fueled despair, the four of them had burned the prosthetics in an antique BBQ grill, then sat silent among the crackling ashes until a dim pink morning sent them to a new day.

We're sorry for LARPing in your store, sir. Rowan said, still navigating through a dozen apps in her AR work space. She barely looked anyone in the eyes, let alone the clerk. And tell the manager these bits aren't naughty enough, you ask me.

They made it back outside to regroup and soak in the fresh recycled air. All now rebooted back into their systems, initializing the Harohbakh splash screens and flushing gritty reality down beneath flickers of fantasy delights.

How'd we stumble in there? Shouldn't NavLARP have warned us? Juniper growled. We looked like dorks. Super uber dorks!

We look like flailing dorks no matter where we play, Rhett laughed, patting him on the back.

Meeps yipped like a lunatic, pulling up a flashing notification for all to see. Latest update has bugs, guys, check it out. I'm reading the forum right now. Oh, and someone suggested we gotta keep with a set room.

Wait. Who suggested that? Rowan made eye contact with him briefly.

Someone on the live stream.

What?

Rowan panicked; she was weird about privacy. Her face quickly shifted from human to the dancing form of some pink anime monster, masked by an expensive IdentiPro that could stop any system from recording her face. It was state of the art, but she'd gotten soft around them and forgotten to boot up her antiface today.

Even now, part of her wondered who was circling her face around the net.

Rhett glared back at Meeps, a wash of betrayal across his lips. You live stream our sessions?

Meeps shrugged. People like our sessions. Lazy people who pay me to watch this. The most popu—

Rhett examined the chat stream that scrolled by over Meeps’ head. The last reply read: the laziest.

Perverts. Ugh. Rowan groaned as she flagged some of the sleazier comments in the chat.

Meeps procured an ice cream from a nearby automated cart. "Hey, I got credits. SLRRP. Let's go rent a room and continue our game session. SLRRP. Don't they have those temp party places on the lower floors?"

"I hate set rooms, Juniper said. Look at the vast freedom before us! An entire mall to explore! We can climb the stairs to feel like we're scaling mountains!" Theater music lifted from his shoulder rig as he spoke, programmed to match his delivery of speech, and now he was singing like a fool. He’d been kicked out of theater class for reasons he wouldn’t talk about, so he did broadway in public. Badly.

Rowan groaned again. Do you have to do these bits?

Juniper continued his musical bit despite her. That food court down there? It can be our villa-aage! And the laser tag underground club? But a treacherous dunge-ooon! Come on man. Have some heart. Be a part, of the fun, let’s get on- have some heaaart! Come with me, adventuri-iiiing!

In a set room we won't look like dorks. Meeps said.

Juniper rolled his eyes as he shut the music off. We look like dorks anywhere we go. You're a zebra, dude.

Meeps kicked his shin but the avatar's animation was so cute, Juniper took it in stride.

Look, the whole reason we come to this consumer nightmare is so we can wander around, Rhett said, directing their eyes down the central opening of the Triple Pines, a nostalgia retro throwback mall. All the other buildings have weird gravity elevator things. Or just boring elevators. We got stairs here. Real stairs. That's a quality undeniable, my friend.

Each section of the five-story complex had been themed for a specific historical decade. Physical decorations enriched everything from design to color, from shop choices to layout. Their current floor of choice was a 2050 throwback, a decade that had seen a huge resurgence in fantasy movies and games. The storefronts here were castles, even below their digital augmentations. Kiosks had been transformed into the carts of traveling merchants, staff dressed like fairies, security wore augmented knight costumes. Every hour on the hour, full-sized digital citizens crowded the halls as they fled toward the food court, terrorized by the projection of a great dragon who trailed a banner displaying the best meals of the day. The copiously detailed physical flair made the AR overwhelming to most shoppers, making it the least visited floor. And that meant there was plenty of space for fantasy fans LARPing in the mall.

Rowan called it immersion.

So, food court? Rhett asked, walking backwards while looking over them. He flipped on his Harohbakh app and took note of the game landscape, glowing in projection across his eyes. Here in aug view, the boring mall still existed dimly under the gloss. That was but a ghost cemented down there—the real world—visually overwhelmed by a glimmering electric view of bright vast fields and blue skies.

Beneath their feet it looked convincing. Aug boots tracked prints through a worn, muddy brown path mapped onto the floor. Currently they progressed through north valley plains, surrounded by massive mountain ranges. Around them, the wide open passages of the mall gave way to moving images beyond, of villages and trees and underbrush, all obscuring the mountain edges that led up to an ominous series of peaks beyond the stormclouds in the far distance.

Here, Rhett was not the scrawny, boring, routine normal guy fresh into college. In Harohbakh, he stood tall as Agava of the Poison Vines! His pointed ears were marked with tattoos that bespoke his heritage. In this app, he was not the same as every other boring human. No! Here in Harohbakh, he was extravagant! Bland consumers passed by, ignorant of his fantasy. Agava was a proud purplette, a magical race of plant-elves with long green grass for hair and soft purple skin highlighted by rough patches of worn, green bark.

Agava-Rhett behaved far less noble than most tree dwellers, to be honest. They were a little stuck up. Rhett was a crass realist with dirt under his fingernails, a purplette social pariah, made infamous by his untimely flatulence. Hence his exile. It was a fun character quirk, and it masked his own irritable bowels. But being exiled was a blessing, as far as he was concerned. Purplettes didn’t carry coin purses ripe for plucking. Foolish humans and dworks in big fancy cities had more than enough riches to pass his fingertips, so many riches they’d be none the wiser when he pocketed them.

Rhett had spent forever building the character model in ModSculp. All of them did; it was the most addictive part of the game when not actually playing a session.

Juniper hurried to get ahead of them, his avatar's hairy bulk thundering through the grass. Here in the fantasy app, he was magnificent. Children gawked in awe as he passed, maidens whispered lascivious secrets, and drunk villagers in taverns chanted his name: Dreamsnappah Chainjaw. A proud stout dwork with green skin and tusks, mightiest was he, who clenched massive runed axes in each fist! He who destroyed armies! It all fed Juniper’s ego, and ergo, his alter ego. Was he not nearly as tall as the flimsy purplette? And where the puny plant-elf grew thin and hollow, a dwork such as he only throbbed beneath sinewed muscles, woven like rope. So much did Dreamsnappah's ego flare that he refused to wear a shirt, letting his braided beard cover what wasn't hidden beneath his thick body hair.

In the food court, they passed a massive statue of dying cartoon logos from extinct brands. A plaque at the bottom read: Dedicated to the fallen careers and crippled egos of those who bravely fought in the Mall Wars. May their branding be eternal.

Juniper said Rowan, get us lunch.

What? Why can't you get it? Rowan answered. She remained cycled out of Harohbakh, a lanky, timid woman whose hair masked her eyes from contact with anyone, heavily buried beneath cute dancing monsters. But they could see her, even if the recorders could not. Make the healer do it, she said.

Meeps was whispering to a video call, and he cycled back into Harohbakh, not changing his avatar other than dressing himself in a decorative outfit of feathers and beads. In the game, Meeps was, well, Meeps. He played their shaman zebrome, a custom race he hacked in with a packet splicer that the admins had simply given up trying to stop. As far as they were concerned, it wasn’t unbalanced and didn’t impact fair play.

Healer's busy on a call, Juniper said, looking around the food court. And I would go grab munchies but I'm busy setting up a safety box in the big open area here. Otherwise ‘Dreamfappah Lameskull’ keeps stumbling into things.

I'll do it. Rhett grumbled, cycling out and dispelling his plant-elf assassin avatar. The woman working the register played Harohbakh too, and she would make fun of his character again. He wasn't ready to die of embarrassment today. PM me your orders.

Around the large empty area between stores and tables, a digital red box appeared in their vision. A safety box boundary, its lines painted as glimmering ribbons of digital flair. It was only an AR illusion, one that flashed bright red were they to cross outside, blinding them with annoying disclaimer text.

Juniper pouted like a baby, which only made his fearsome dwork avatar laughable. Hey, Rowan, get in the game. Now. C'mon.

Rowan sighed, clearing off all multitasking distractions on her workspace. There was paperwork, business messages, and a growing pile of unfinished material for her episodic fiction: a blushable offense, really. She muttered about it all under her breath and flipped Harohbakh back on. Her avatar Adeline unfolded into a massive wall of woman who barely cleared doorways. Across her shoulders she wore an ambassador's robe, and underneath that she wore plate armor. All of this barely contained her avatar's heaving breasts, a burdensome and comically unreal bit of anatomy that she took delight in flaunting. The character was gigantic in every aspect, and Rowan giggled at every little jiggle. It was everything the real Rowan below was not.

In villages, NPCs confused her with golems and war machines. Adeline the Titan was human but built like a stone slab, hands bigger than a dwork’s head. A peaceful enforcer was she. When exhausted of bribery, negotiation, and calm resolutions, only then would her gauntlets unsheath a sword, wide as a tombstone, from her back: a sword that fell trees in a single blow.

By the time Rhett returned with the food, the rest of the group had dispatched the marauders. Rhett really liked fighting marauders and grew ill in his stomach. It wasn't about missing out on the XP, nor was his nausea spurred by their rudeness of playing without him.

It was the stranger who had joined them. A fifth person. An interloper.

His anxiety kicked into overdrive.

The stranger played a character of some shifting unknown avatar, here masked in magic robes, wielding a staff in one hand. The face remained nearly featureless besides mouth and eyes. Who was beneath it? He groaned in annoyance. He'd seen one of these things before. A graukin, a thievish monster race of odd yellow-gray people with distended faces and hollow black eyes. Or maybe it was just a bundled mage pretending to be a graukin.

Beneath the illusion Rhett saw the real face behind the avatar, and his heart skipped a beat.

The woman had such beautiful eyes.

When Juniper saw Rhett his smile cracked wide. Duuuuude, you gotta meet Finley.

***

That was when everything went wrong.

With five of them at lunch, discussing the movements of enemy armies across the Valley of Summerhill, Rhett ate quietly, observing, as a heat passed up through him. Sure, Juniper was discussing the wild untapped wilderness, hundreds of square kilometers where there existed little of civilization. But something had changed. Juniper was so animated. He spoke of the vast bustling cities outside the valley, and how here there were only the shadowy dangers of a thick wilderness. Outposts guarded the valley entrances to keep violence from spilling into the lands. Few dworks had the courage to live here, and less than half the villages they encountered showed any signs of life, though they showed a lot of death.

The villagers were eager for news from outside. For supplies. For help. The valley was ominous, they cried, and those that still breathed hid half mad in bunkers, armed and ready. For every entrenched and prepared enclave there were dozens of cobweb-filled huts. The true residents of this valley were hordes of goblins, laser-rats, lizardkin, and all manner of terrors far worse. The good civilized people who lived here grew less and less civilized over the years, until they fled back out of the valley or became monsters themselves. Juniper explained it all in dramatic and sinister tones.

Rhett watched how Juniper and Meeps grew entranced, their faces slack, whenever Finley spoke.

They've rallied the goblin tribes in the South. Meeps said pointing at an in-game parchment map.

Rhett chewed back his pizza, sucking down some simulated sugar drink, an act aug-mapped as Agava chewing down roots and fruits. He cleared his throat to awkwardly yell We disrupted the negotiation with the laser-rats. I think we can rally them to the resistance.

Why'd we go with this campaign? It's too slow. Juniper said, poking at some sort of tofu block on his plate. His mind couldn't wrap around the sight of it, but when it touched his tongue and he closed his eyes it was indistinguishable from a well-cooked beef steak. Guys, this stupid steak cube is unbelievable. You have to try it. And this damn game is gonna take forever to take an entire army down. I don't want to be in a retirement home finishing it. Even if the home has such perfect steak flavors. Couldn’t we have done slaughterfest dungeon?

Finley rolled her eyes. Oh god. We might as well play tower defense and leave Harohbakh all together.

I'm tired of dungeons, Rowan said, ignoring Finley's suggestion. We've got five people now. We'll clear it easy. Besides, you in a hurry or something?

Speaking of which, what brings you to our fellowship, Finley? Rhett blurted. His voice croaked halfway in his throat. Uh, I mean, you just sort of appeared. How do we know you're not just a really elaborate AR illusion? His voice got weaker and more paced between words. To deceive our minds. Maybe you’re just a convincing AI?

Finley slapped a hand on his shoulder and he jumped an inch.

I go to university with Meeps. He said you needed help. She smiled. I, being as benevolent as I am, said sure. I can beat this campaign single-handed. In one day. You need me, so be grateful.

The others laughed.

Rhett played it up, campy, elaborately voiced like a bad old timey radio play. Maybe you're the spell of an evil wizard sent to fool us! Oooooeeooo!

Need is too strong a word. Meeps said. We appreciate your help, Fin-Bin. But I am only grateful for waffles.

Hey, wait. Rowan? Rhett said, swiveling around. Rowan? Roooowan?

What?

Roooowan.

WHAT?

What are you dooooing?

You know what I’m doing! Rowan snapped back. On her AR desktop she shifted a small 3D map of all of the kingdoms of Harohbakh. Stuff the game module didn’t even reveal, and certainly far more elaborate in detail than the in-game parchment Meeps held.

Above-game is cheating! Our characters can’t see that. Spoilers territory! You didn’t even try and pretend it was a spell or something, Rhett said. Put the map away. Use your map item.

Calm down, man. Meeps told him, scooting closer. Hey, look, that dude from the gym sent me more pics of his junk.

Rhett wanted to look, but didn't want Finley to think he wanted to look.

Just block them, Meeps. Juniper said. He burped and got up to collect empty trays.

The item map is unclear and garbage, which means I'd have to download an add-on to see it correct. I have no desire for either. Rowan said. It's a game. And it's only cheating if we break the rules. Harohbakh comes with a built in world map, so, no cheating here.

I think Rhett's too hardcore for that. Talk about method. Finley laughed, downing her salad.

Rhett whined. My immersion!

So what campaign we running? asked Finley.

Red Paws of Ruin, Meeps said, finishing up a plate of noodles.

Rowan groaned. Wait, Meeps, you put us in a furry module?

Meeps blushed.

Oh, I've beat this one before, Finley said. Only the big boss really counts as furry. She messed with her AR desktop and looked through spoilers. No. Wait. I think Meeps changed out a lot of, yeah, there’s a ton of furries added to this game module. But no big deal. We can win real quick, all we have to do is—"

Rhett nearly fainted. No no, Finley! Please no spoilers! We're here to have fun, not to just beat it.

I'm sorry. I didn't realize you hadn't beaten it. Finley said. Go on. I'll act surprised.

They were done eating. Around them, sparse cafeteria patrons quietly ate. As the crew booted back into full color Harohbakh they were greeted by untamed AR wilds. The safety box lines would keep them from physically moving beyond the big empty center space. All distractions had been accounted for, now only a terrible digital army of murderous monsters awaited. Such adventures!

Speak for yourself. Rhett, Juniper said, returning to sit next to Finley. Show me how we can take down the goblin tribes of the north.

A group of Keeper Ball players moved past, snickering and mocking the group until they eyed Rowan. They went quiet, just stupidly grinning at her. When they were gone Rowan quickly searched for them on SocNet, her face torn between consideration and feigned disgust.

What's the Red Scourge done with the tribes so far? Finley asked.

Everyone looked at her, confused, standing to get into in group position.

Red Scourge? Rhett gasped, as if deflated. Spoilers!

Juniper shrugged. " Party foul, Fin-Bin. We didn't know the big bad's name. But cool, whatever. We did know someone rallied three lizardkin villages. Now we know their name. Red Scurvy. No more