Outside the pavilion the sun was blazing away low in the sky, adding a radiant warmth to the chill air. If someone were put under a heat lamp and had an air conditioner blowing in his face, it would be cause for complaint. To the wanderer on a mountaintop, though, feeling the bare sun and crisp dry air, it was a transcendental experience. So it was for Ember. As long as it didn’t go on for too long. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath.

“Okay, let’s go.” she said to July, and when she opened them up she saw he had already taken the first few steps down. The lower half of his body was disappearing below the platform. She charged a few steps forward and then ran into an invisible hand which pushed her back, necessitating she speak to him from a comfortable distance.

“Where are you going?!” Ember cried out after him.

“Your fairy told me not to carry you down.” July said.

“I’m an Agent!” SOFI yelled insistently.

“Don’t listen to her!” Ember pleaded. July held his hands up and disappeared below the platform, clearly wishing for all the world to stay out of any Enduser-Agent internecine conflict. She fretted, stomped around on the platform and, growing ever angrier, withdrew her Cell from its holster and chucked it down to the deckboards. There was a little yelp from SOFI and to her dismay the device skittered over the edge of the platform and flew off into the space below. Her heart leapt up into her throat, where it remained until she saw SOFI waft up back from the edge, straining with all her might to fly up with the Eos. Once she crested the edge she tossed it down to the boards and settled down on top of it, and went about unruffling her chiton. Ember crawled over towards the edge on her hands and knees.

“A Scot with a temper? Unheard of.” SOFI said, with affected confusion. Ember hadn’t recalled telling SOFI about her ancestry. Did she already know, somehow? She might know everything about her, given the power of Agency probably put the entire Internet in her head. Or perhaps she’d just been given a profile on September specifically.

“It gets obnoxious when everyone thinks they know better, like they can just waltz into your life and wave a magic wand.” Ember said.

“I have a couple of salient points to make. One is that you are 18 and as the wisest Agent I might in fact know better than you, and the other is that I might have a magic wand as well.” SOFI said.

“Well,” Ember said, and couldn’t think of a really good objection, “okay. But how am I supposed to get down? Walk?”

“Oh no! Never. You couldn’t do that. Not in your state.” SOFI said. Ember was relieved at how well SOFI seemed to understand, until the little fairy added: “You’re going to jump off.”

Ember instinctively hunched down towards the floorboards, feeling that getting closer to them might stave off the terror.

“Oh my god. Are you giving me a tutorial?” Ember asked. SOFI nodded. She didn’t feel like she had any blood left in her. Where it had gone to, no one could say.

“I know you’re afraid, which is why I’m not asking much. It should take only a centibeat after casting Leaflight to get yourself over the edge, and then ol’ Newton takes care of the rest.” SOFI said confidently.

Ember reached out a shaking hand and picked up her Cell, and slowly backed away from the edge on her hands and knees until she judged she was far enough away to stand up. SOFI’s plan was basically sound. Leaflight was now an app she could examine, and like the Cellblade one its only apparent function was to provide the pattern that should be drawn. The outline of a willow leaf, thin and feathery, was two strokes. One down for the stem, and one around for the edge of the leaf. She kept it open for reference.

“What if I mess up the Gesture?” Ember said nervously.

“Splat! So, make haste slowly.”

Ember took a few slow and deep breaths to calm herself, as December had recommended previously, and paced around for a while longer. She knew she was going to do it, just not… yet. What ultimately spurred her forward was when she saw kray come out and raise her phone up to take a video. With incoming Internet infamy bright in her mind, she drew the simple willow Gesture from the hip as fast as festina lente would allow, and felt the phone vibrate once with acceptance. She gritted her teeth and ran towards the edge, closing her eyes for the last few paces. She was more forceful this time than the dexterous hand which always pushed her away from an edge, and too quick for the sinister hand which sometimes pulled her forward if she lingered in fear. To her surprise the rising fear only lasted as far as the threshold—once she was over it she felt completely calm. Though it had rose in her chest and threatened to halt her, there was a space past which the bubble of fear was pierced. The feeling was exactly that of misjudging the timing of a yellow light and sailing through as it turned red. No point in worrying about it once the deed was done.

She felt like a distant and cool observer to the rushing wind and rapidly approaching earth. Just before her moment of death arrived a whirlwind of autumn leaves spun up around her and she was slowed to the same gradual pace they enjoyed. The tip of her boot touched the ground, and then the heel, and then the other tip and heel, until both her feet were standing firm on the grass. The lazier leaves were still falling around her, lilting back and forth. She laughed under her breath, an unbalanced titter which would have caused her to worry for her safety if she’d heard it from someone else.

“Awesome.” July said. She heard his feet crunching down on the leaves as he approached her. She hadn’t even realized he was there. She whirled around to give him a piece of her mind. July held up his hands in preemptive defense.

“Hey, I’m just a sellsword. Take it out on the fairy.”

“She tried!” SOFI said.

“Collusion.” Ember grumbled, finished with July. She satisfied herself with dashing her foot through the ring of leaves that covered the grass around her, sending a small flock of them up.

“So you’re cured?” July said. Ember’s temper flared up, but she managed to beat it down and compose herself. She simply shook her head.

“Ha!” SOFI said triumphantly, “The shop girl uploaded a clip of you jumping off, Ember. There were a few leaves left behind when you went over the top, too. People will love this.”

“Thank god for deceptive editing.” Ember said. If kray had captured her pointless handwringing or the part where she threw a fit, she would have come off very differently. Not her finest moment. Now that she was safely on the ground and not stuck high up on a towering platform her behavior seemed so absurd and childish.

#

For security reasons they chose to continue along the ring until they reached a less trafficked entrance to the subway. It didn’t take long for Ember’s stomach to settle and, once it did, she felt that she was absolutely starving.

“SOFI, what’s around here to eat? We don’t have much money.” she said. It felt a little odd to be asking her magical Agent such a prosaic question, but SOFI had evidently supplanted her phone’s automatic assistant. This time the fairy eschewed mischief, though, and gave an honest answer: there was a cluster of fast-food places up ahead.

Ten minutes later Ember was tearing the tip of the paper sheath off of a disposable straw. She shimmied the rest of it up until just about an inch or so remained within, and then fired off the improvised air rocket at nearby July. It sailed off in a random direction before reaching him owing to its poor aerodynamic qualities. Ember leaned over and retrieved the wrapper from where it lay on the greasy tiles of the floor. They were both hovering near the counter at a ubiquitous clown-themed fast food chain and waiting for their orders to come out. Ember had spent a couple minutes hemming and hawing over her choice, while July didn’t so much as cast his eyes upward before putting in his request for a Number 1. July eventually figured out he could pay for goods by taking the Tokens out of his Nokia, at which point they would radiate into the world via cellular and he was free to use them. Tokens were, as Ember expected, silver colored. Ember herself paid via NFC.

The breakfast menu was up, but someone on the staff recognized them as Endusers and allowed them to order lunch, owing to the fact that neither Ember nor July were keen on the breakfast menu at that particular establishment. There was a competing king-themed chain across the canal which she had declined on the grounds that they’d have to walk all the way up to the next bridge. She caught July make a glance kingward.

“Monarchist.” she said.

“Nah.”

“Wait. Don’t tell me this is about clowns.” Ember brightened.

The register girl put down three trays, two for herself and July and a third for her Agent who had ordered on Ember’s tab. SOFI had chosen a salad which was, relatively speaking, essentially a four door sedan full of lettuce. A few pieces of the fried chicken would constitute her entire body weight.

“You know they say losing the last 20 grams is the hardest. Oh, make it a diet soda.” SOFI said, from where she was perched on Ember’s shoulder. She went over to the machine and dutifully filled up SOFI’s soda for her, not even bothering to question what she was planning to do with all of it. She eased herself across the plastic seat of the booth and allowed herself to relax. She saw July crunch down on a fry idly, his gaze roving through the paned glass over the streets beyond for threats.

“I know we’re in danger, but I’m not really made for the stress of always looking over my back.” Ember said.

“Don’t you worry.” July said, fairly casually given the responsibility he was assuming. They didn’t make them like that any more.

“SOFI, any idea about FIDO’s warning?” Ember said. SOFI was concentrating on something else, though, and a second later the salad and the drink both shrank until they were fit for a dollhouse. Ember shook her head with amazement.

“FIDO?” SOFI said, “Lots of abilities have a hard counter, however, they are singular. July himself is a frustrating guy for someone who has good Bluetooth attacks, but he’s the only one who is totally immune.”

“But can’t people just turn it off?” July said. Ember had wondered that herself. Of course, SOFI was using it at the moment, and it would be annoying in general to have to always be turning it on and off. Then again, she didn’t know what BT attacks did.

“Good thought but no. BT attacks are powerful enough to reactivate target BT with no extra delay.” SOFI said.

“What do they even do?” Ember said.

“For example, they can make it so you have to Gesture in reverse, cause battery drain, seal me, terminate your active Gestures, and so on.” SOFI said. Ember checked the battery level on her Cell—she was currently at 74%.

“Oh.” Ember said, “Energy. It is a mobile game after all.”

“Yes. Every Gesture has a battery cost associated with it. Agents cost battery only when they are using their own abilities, except for Radiation, which allows them to manifest physically via Bluetooth or Cellular. Regenerating injuries requires battery. Even if you do nothing your Cell will drain at a slow rate.”

Ember leaned around the table and looked for the wall plate for the power plugs. There was one under the booth. She didn’t have a charge cable handy, but given where she was it shouldn’t be hard to find one.

“I see you’re looking for outlets. It’s not that easy. You’ll have to find a cradle when you get low. Every hotel room has one. Rental properties do. Some restaurants do, but only if they’re classy. Controlling a district gives you access to a base there.” SOFI said. Ember looked taken aback.

“Hotels? Rental properties?” she said to SOFI, who nodded to her.

“Of course. This will certainly last longer than a day. It will only end when the conditions are fulfilled.”

Ember stared down at her unwrapped and heretofore uneaten cheeseburger, and July put down the fry he was holding and looked out of the window. SOFI was innocent of the bomb she had dropped and proceeded to attack her Lilliputian lunch with a vigor.

“When I told you guys you might die you were like, oh, whatever.” SOFI said, her mouth partly full, until she swallowed, “But staying overnight? Now that’s a horse of a another color. Teenagers in a nutshell.”

“I’m 22.” July pointed out. SOFI only shrugged at him, suggesting that it was immaterial to her point.

“Don’t you have friends, family, SOFI? A life? What are you?” Ember said.

“I’m human, sort of. All the Agents are, save one.” SOFI said. FIDO barked, and July brought his PalmPilot up and put it on the table. A miniature FIDO tumbled out of it and pawed over to SOFI happily, forcing the fairy to quickly pick up her food and raise it above muzzle-height. SOFI held out a hand parallel to the ground, and FIDO obediently sat down. She tossed a piece of chicken from her salad towards him and he snatched it out of the air. Ember squinted and saw that all of the chicken from the salad was now uneaten in a pile at the bottom of the tiny bowl, which SOFI then placed on the table. FIDO resisted heroically until SOFI made a permissive signal with her hand, then he set on the morsels in the bowl and wagged his tail high. Ember saw that even though his muzzle dipped below the strict line of sight of the IR when he put it in the bowl, it didn’t disappear. It was nice to know they had some room to fudge things.

“Sort of?” Ember said. SOFI put her hands on her hips proudly.

“Due to my direct control of a dozen major northeastern data centers, I have nearly the sum total of human knowledge spliced into my long term memory. I am monitoring all public information sources in Noumea constantly. Do you want to set any alerts?”

“That’s neat.” Ember said. “How about keeping an eye on May?”

“A User recently made a cut about May and uploaded it. Watch!” SOFI said excitedly. The fairy disappeared into her Cell and pulled up what a video of May coming across a Coin which a brown rat had possession of. She got the worst of it in the ensuing chase, which ended in the basin of a large and fast-flowing sewer. The rat and the Coin were swept away with the current in their flight, a fate May narrowly avoided herself by catching hold of the edge of the pipe. The clip ended with December spraying May down with a garden hose on the green grass of a suburban lawn while the owner of the house watched cautiously from the porch. December had one hand in his pocket while the other managed the nozzle. Ember laughed, which caused July some unease.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him.

“Don’t get too cozy.” he said, “She’s a killer.”

Ember nodded hesitantly for the sake of reestablishing harmony between them. She didn’t believe it could be that simple, but there was just no sense in having it out with July over something she wasn’t herself sure about yet. She was only sure that she wasn’t really laughing at May.

#

Somewhere along the canal they ran into a vendor hunched over a cart selling Italian ices. Since it was hot and humid under the tropical greenhouse of the Rainforest Ring, she petitioned July to stop and partake. The vendor was a man in his late 20s who kept his greasy hair short and was dressed casually in an airy beige button down shirt and a similarly lightly colored pair of shorts. His white crew socks nearly reached his knees and he wore a pair of brown deck shoes with them. Not the most stylish character, but Ember was wrapped in a wool sweater and envied him. His cooler stand was a simple white cuboid which stood upon a set of four swiveling casters.

Attached to one end of the stand was a tube which held a white-and-yellow striped beach umbrella aloft, even though the sun would ever break through the canopy of trees, and the other end a swinging arm with a tablet for NFC payment. On the umbrella and on three of the six faces of the cooler was an icon with three lemons, which Ember guessed was probably the only flavor he offered. That was fine by her, since it was her favorite. She didn’t come across these vendors often enough to seek variety, and in fact the only place she’d ever seen them with consistency was the zoo.

In her memory, the only days she’d ever been to the zoo were the hottest and most oppressive of the summer. Those days were, by the by, when the charismatic megafauna one goes to the zoo to see would understandably retire to their shaded hiding places. Her thrifty father, which was what she called him when she was in a good mood, steadfastly refused to pay out for any cold drinks or sweets to mollify his overheated little angel. In retrospect it was hard to blame him, since the prices were exploitative. At the time, however, she didn’t think in those terms. She didn’t think in those terms now either, which she was about to prove.

“Good morning,” Ember said, a greeting the man returned, “I’ll take one.”

“You’re in luck!” he said, “I can give you a trial for free.”

“Fab.” Ember said.

“If you’ll just swipe the NFC pad, we can start your trial.”

Ember sighed.

“Am I subscribing to this? I don’t want a subscription. I just want one. I’ll pay for it individually.” she said.

“Don’t worry, you’re free to cancel at any time. You can even order and cancel before tasting it and I wouldn’t mind a bit,.” the man said, and waved his hands to assuage her. That wasn’t so bad. The payment screen described that 50 Tokens a month entitled her to one ice a day from any such stands scattered around Noumea. Ember took the lemon ice and hesitated a moment, feeling a bit uneasy. It seemed like a fine deal, on the face of it. That worried her. She peeled off the top and applied a sliver of the ice to the wooden spoon that rode alongside the Styrofoam cup. It was exactly what she wanted. So far so good.

“This is nice,” she said, “but I don’t need a subscription. I’d like to cancel.”

“I understand. I can’t process cancellations here. Please call this number.” the man said. He jotted down a phone number on a small card and handed it over to her. She gave him a betrayed look and snapped it out of his hands, and took her Cell out to ring up the shady business.

The other end was dominated by an interactive voice system which did not (was programmed not to) understand what the word ‘cancel’ might ever mean. Ember’s frustration grew ever greater throughout ten minutes of auditory manhandling by the Kafkaesque robot. When she came to the end of her rope she pressed her thumb aggressively down on the unsatisfying virtual button to close the call and resigned herself to a monthly subscription to frozen dessert. She gave the vendor a sour look of defeat, which he returned with a careless plastic smile. He was too far down the chain to express any sense of satisfaction from one additional duping. That was practically tantamount to blamelessness, and her annoyance faded once deprived of a valid target.

“Would you like a trial as well, sir?” he said to July, who demurred with a shake of his head. Since her ice had largely melted while she was on the phone, she ditched it in a nearby trash can and shoved her hands on her pockets before continuing on.

#

As they walked forward, the Rainforest Ring was changing around them, becoming darker and cooler. The stone path was growing narrower, and the vegetation of the understory grew feral and threatened to obscure necessary infrastructure, like the edge of the canal, standing information kiosks, or even, in some places, entire storefronts. The nature of the shops was changing as well. Familiar brands and high-gloss presentation fell away and the milieu was now taking on the appearance of a jungle bound strip mall in a progressively worse neighborhood. Constant pressure from the impinging flora lent the scene an eerie post-apocalyptic feel, as if the plants could return it all to the earth at any moment. She saw one merchant, an old Korean gentleman in casual clothes, beating a bunch of grasping vines away from his neon ‘Open’ sign. The same stout yellow steamboats which puttered through the rest of the ring came through here. Other shoppers were perusing up and down the paths, toing and froing with varying degrees of purposefulness.

“Wait!” the guy said to July when she caught sight of him, “You are July?”

“Yeah,” July said, turning around and giving him a nod.

While they spoke Ember examined the man’s storefront. There were a pair of dusty display cases flanking a rickety door which led inside. The presence of a water-filled five gallon bucket nearby told of an impending initiative to clean up which was, by the looks of things, long overdue. The cases were stacked up with old (or ancient) electronics. Relics, they might more accurately be called. There was a Diamond Rio MP3 player, which was one of the first such devices made available to the public. It had a memory of 32 Megabytes, which wasn’t quite up to the task of storing an entire album. There were precarious stacks of ‘HitClips’, an even more embarrassing technology from the Tiger Corporation targeted at clueless youths. HitClips cartridges outputted a staggering 60 seconds of turn-of-the-millennium pop music. An unopened Apple Newton was centered precisely on the top shelf, the clear potentate of a small kingdom of junk. Its handwriting recognition system was best known as a party gag guaranteed to tear mirthful laughter from anyone who hadn’t paid for it. Nothing in the store postdated 1999. It was, if anything, a kind of antique shop.

The door creaked on its hinges as Ember went in and the humid warmth of the Ring immediately gave way to the musty smell of an air conditioner which was not equal to the task set before it. There were three rows of those beige metal shelves which were always in thrift stores and ethnic groceries, supplemented by a few wire-rack shelves against the walls. A few old portable CD players were placed on the shelf, labeled, and priced accordingly. A bin nearby had many more haphazardly chucked into it like potatoes, unlabeled, unloved, and possibly broken. Someone had paid a lot for one once, though, and cherished it.

There was an ephemeral feel to old things like that—one day they were worth something, the next they were just a lot of mildly toxic trash. Technology moved so fast there wasn’t time to even bury the old things. They were like goldfish; you flushed them down the toilet and forgot you ever owned them.

Most of this junk predated Ember, and most of it was unknown to her. For that reason it was sort of charming. She could technically afford one of the CD players in the bin, but it would have made for a silly purchase. Nearby there was a paltry collection of similarly aged CDs and a rack of fortunately newer-vintage batteries, in case caprice needed a midwife.

“Not like I have any way to carry anything. My purse is a world away.” Ember said to SOFI. She didn’t know how men did it. She imagined not carrying a bag of stuff around everywhere was supposed to demonstrate how they could bend the world to their will with sheer force of manliness. If their eyes got dry, or their nose ran, or they got a splinter, testosterone would take care of it somehow.

“You don’t need a purse, unless you want one for fashion reasons. At the moment you have 1500 cubic inches of storage space in your inventory. That’s about the size of a bookbag.” SOFI said.

“SOFI, why don’t you tell me about these things in advance?” Ember said.

“Laziness is a big part.”

“Fair enough. How do I get things in there? And take them out.”

“Bring up the camera app, and then tap the object.” SOFI said. Ember did as she was instructed and tapped on one of the junky CD players. It was a garish little box of pink and teal, a birthday present for a pre-millennial tween. A pair of equally cheap and equally colorful headphones were bound to the faceplate with packing tape, as at a garage sale. A thin wire band stretched between the yellowed earpads. It probably didn’t even have skip protection. The flash LED on the back of her Cell went off and the next thing she knew there was a photo of it in an album.

“Got it, what now?.” Ember said.

“Now you are a shoplifter.” SOFI said playfully. Ember looked over her shoulder to see the Korean shopkeep and July were in the store now, and the older man was giving her a serious stink eye. In the bin the teal CD player had vanished from the world, becoming entangled in the photograph she had taken in a flash of electric voodoo.

“I was going to pay for it.” Ember said weakly to him, which defused none of the man’s annoyance. Putting it back in the bin as she intended was too brazen now.

“Sure.” he said.

Ember hung her head as she shuffled over to the register. Rainforest Ring was going to be the death of her. She briefly imagined the hastily assembled pan-ethnic coalition of anti-debtor violence soon to be arrayed against her. She showed the picture to the shopkeeper to ring up accurately, and the NFC pad happily vaporized the last of her spare money. She was barely able to retain 6T for the ride to Wikitown and another 50T so that the incoming Italian ice subscription would process. July followed behind her to the register and put a two pairs of batteries and a copy of Nirvana’s In Utero on the glass counter. When he finished he put the double-A batteries on top of the scratched up jewel case which appeared to have endured a stint as a coaster. She hadn’t listened to the album before. Then she noticed that he hadn’t bought a player for himself, but he had bought a belt case for his old PDA. She was about to make fun of how dorky it was when he presented her with the CD.

“Happy birthday, September.” July said, presenting the pair to her. She took the between her thumb and forefinger, careful not to let the plastic-wrapped batteries fall from their perch.

“How’d you know?” Ember said. Her birthday was the 23rd, which was still several days away, as much as time still held meaning.

“My birthday is in July, and it’s September now, so.” he said.

Ember hugged the present to her chest. “I’ll—um… thanks,” she stammered, red faced. She had prepared a quip about how she’d return the favor on his birthday, but that was all that she managed to say of it. July motioned to the door, to which Ember gave a stiff nod.

She could have spent days combing through the weirdness that Rainforest Ring had gradually transformed to accommodate. Her initial experience with the area reflected nothing so much as an especially grandiose mall, but now that they’d gotten away from the core it was telescoping into something deep and crazy, fulfilling SOFI’s promise of a practical-infinity of purchasable items from every time and place. And she’d still seen only a fraction of it. They passed by a store that only sold things that were made out of beeswax. Another that specialized in antique toys—this was one of the few they went inside, and caused a deep regret within both of them that they were out of money. One particularly vexing find for Ember was a store that sold a generic holster for her Eos at a fraction of the price. How could she have known?

Every so often July would have to tug her away from the windows when something immensely fascinating caught her eye, though occasionally even he peeled off occasionally to examine a curio that resonated with him. It was a disappointing surprise when they eventually came upon the entrance to the subway and embarked to Wikitown.