Asimov's Science Fiction: July 2013 by Penny Publications Read Free Book Online Page A

look. "Oh, you'll find it. But let me put an app on your phone. Why? Let's pretend that it predicts Lifter's locations based on feeds from HowSquare, WebWhere, UseeMEseeU, and ShotSpotter. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying it does."
    "ShotSpotter?" said Bengt uncertainly. "Isn't that the software that cops use to pinpoint open-air gunfire?"
    "Would make sense. If this app was in fact what I said it was. There's been some armed assaults against the Lifter truck lately. Tasty, tasty. People losing their heads. Next of kin, embittered friends—they're like:
Lifter stole my loved one!
The anger's building to a climax.
Who killed Majek Wobble?
I can see the posters, the benef it concert, the rabid midnight mob—" Olala trailed off, busy tweaking Bengt's phone. "I'm really not sure where you're at," said Bengt. "Skungy Olala in his filthy cave. Into his f laky, menacing head-trips. Where did Olala come from, anyway? What are his goals? Many questions. Here's your phone, ligand. Have a good time in the truck. Eat for hours and hours. And, dude, if you can—learn how to shed. It's a better ending if you do. Don't end up like Majek Wobble."
    Utterly bewildered, Bengt pocketed his phone and his ear tag and left in a hurry, detouring through the mall proper to nosh on some free food-court samples. Maybe if he ate enough of that stuff he wouldn't need to go to Lifter.
    But, as with Olala's beer, the tidbits of Popeye's fried chicken and Panda Express boneless ribs, usually so rewarding, failed to please. Nothing but Lifter food would do. Looking around the humdrum mall, Bengt realized that he really
did
think Olala was crazy. The Lifter truck was a soul-devouring lobster trap? Get out of here.
    And okay—even if there was something sinister about the Lifter—Bengt was too sharp to trap. Why not go there, score another great meal, and get out of the place in time? He could do it.
    Bengt studied the little disk of his ear tag. It was a comely object. A gift from the Lifter crew. The writing around its edge was indeed a bit like runes. Or maybe hieroglyphs. Pictograms. Would be interesting to work up a semiotic analysis of them, comparing the runes to cuneiform and to Linear B. A publishable paper in there, an entrée to grad school. That would be an answer to his job drought. Nestle into the bosom of Dame Academe.
    But now, inescapably, his mind circled back to his one obsessive thought. His hunger. He pulled out his smart phone and fired up Olala's app. The app bleated, f lickered, and died—leaving the phone in such a screwed-up state that Bengt had to reboot it via the on/off switch. And now the phone's server was labeled Wiggleweb. And Olala's app still wasn't doing squat.
    What-fucking-ever. How to find Lifter? The ear tag! It was glowing along one edge. Like a digital compass.
    Bengt left the mall, holding the ear tag f lat in the palm of his hand, letting it lead him through the mazy streets of Boston. In half an hour he was back inside the Lifter truck, tucking into a massive meal. A gay banner across the crowded, bustling room read HARVEST FEST. Churchill and Barb were everywhere, Churchill singing all the while, heavy into his reggae.
    When Bengt awoke from his first postprandial nap, he waddled over to the kitchen counter and asked Barb to set him up again. And again. And again.
    The sand dab had begun to stink like low tide in the Gowanus Canal. During the afternoon-long vidding of the tutorial, the hot umbrella lights had reduced the fish to the consistency of cow snot. Cammy's thoughts ran, not for the first nor the last time, down a familiar groove: how nice life must've been, back in the old, stable, prepostmodern, un-fucked-up economy, where you punched a clock and got a weekly check for forty years of eight-hour days, two weeks of vacation every year, then a good pension. But no, she and her peers had been born into the zero-security, free entrepreneurial age of the Endless Hustle.
    She wondered if the pro-tech