Network Effect

“I told you why,” Mensah said, and she sounded normal, calm and firm. Except that was also how she sounded when humans were trying to kill us, so. I had the whole pavilion covered by my drones, and weapons scan was negative. (Weapons weren’t even permitted on the planet except in designated wilderness areas where hostile fauna was a problem.) Voices were loud, but my filters showed they were still well within the range of happy-intoxicated-interested emotional tones. But Mensah’s grip on my hand told me how tense her arm muscles were. Situation assessment: I have no idea.

Farai said, “Thiago, no. She asks for space, you need to give that to her.” She smiled at me politely. I never know how to react to that. She leaned in to Mensah to kiss her, and said, “We’ll see you at the house.”

Mensah nodded and turned, and I let her tow me out of the pavilion.

We made it outside to the pedestrian plaza and I asked her, “Do you need a medic?” I thought she might be sick. If I was a human and I’d had to be in the pavilion with all those other humans for the past two and a half hours, I’d be sick.

“No,” she told me, still sounding calm and normal. “I’m just tired.”

I sent a feed request to the ground vehicle (which on Preservation was called a “go-cart” for some reason) (some stupid reason) to meet us at the nearest transportation area. The plaza and streets were lit with little floating balloon-lights, and the dirt and temporary paving painted with elaborate designs in light-up paint (fortunately it wasn’t the marker paint that broadcasts on the feed, which would have been a nightmare). As we walked through the crowd, people recognized Mensah and smiled and waved. Mensah smiled and waved back, but didn’t let go of my hand. On the fringe near the transport area, an intoxicated human wandered toward us with a handful of glitter dust but veered off when I made deliberate eye contact.

Our vehicle was waiting for us and I handed her in, and climbed into the other seat. I told it to head for the family camp house, which had been erected in a habitation area on the outskirts of the festival site. The vehicle had a limited bot-driver, which would take humans all over the campground and festival site but knew not to go into the designated no-vehicle sections.

It hummed out of the court and into the dark, along the path that led through high grass and scrub trees. Mensah sighed and opened the window. The breeze was still warm and smelled like vegetation, and the guide-lights along the way were low enough not to obscure the starfield. All the humans and augmented humans staying here for the festival made it a heavily populated area, but we were traveling through the section reserved for humans who actually wanted to sleep. The temporary housing (pop-up shelters of all shapes and sizes, camping vehicles, tents and collapsible structures that looked more like art installations) were all mostly dark and quiet. The camp area for humans who had to be loud was on the far side of the grounds with a sound baffle field to deflect the music and crowd noise. She said, “Thank you. I’m sorry I interrupted your evening.”

I recalled my drones except for the one that was recording the play and the detachment I had designated to keep tabs on the family still at the party. (Another detachment was at the camp house, maintaining a perimeter and keeping watch on the two adults and seven children who had gone back earlier.) I wasn’t sure how to react. Mensah wasn’t acting like I had rescued her from certain death, but she wasn’t acting like we were heading back to the habitat after a boring but successful day collecting samples, either. I said, “I recorded the plays. Do you want to see them?”

She perked up. “I never get to see the performances at this thing. Did you get the one— Oh, what was it called? The new historical by Glaw and Ji-min?”

The difference between “calm and normal” and actual normal was measurable enough that I could have made a chart. I just said, “Yes. It’s pretty good.”

Something was bothering her, and it wasn’t just that her family was clearly as weirded out by me as I was by them. They had assumed I would stay in the camp house, which, no. Mensah had told them I didn’t need any help or supervision and could find my own way around. (Quote: “If it can infiltrate high-security corporate installations while people are shooting at it, it can certainly handle a domestic festival.”)

It wasn’t that her family was phobic about the scary rogue SecUnits the entertainment media and the newsfeeds were so fond of, or that they didn’t like bots. (There were “free” bots wandering around on Preservation, though they had guardians who were technically supposed to keep track of them.) It was just me-the-SecUnit they didn’t like.

(That didn’t apply to the seven kids. I was illicitly trading downloads via the feed with three of them.)