So Yesterday by Scott Westerfeld Read Free Book Online Page A

several computers running screen savers, coiling blobs
of light that reflected throughout the room. Jen's Wi-Fi bracelet    o joined in the sparkling, excited by the
heavy wireless traffic. Lexa noticed    ^
the bracelet and gave it the Nod, and I felt obscurely pleased by this sign of
approval.

Steel shelves lined the walls, filled with memory
chips and disk drives and cables, all of these spare parts coded with colored
stickers. The top shelves were lined with about a dozen of those electric
fireplaces with fake glowing embers, so that the ceiling pulsed with a rosy
light.
    Sometimes there is a very fine line between being cool
and being a crank. Whether you're one or the other depends on the overall
effect. Lexa's apartment always filled me with a sense of calm, a room full of
candles but without the fire hazard. It was like being inside a huge meditating
head. Maybe it was a Zen thing after all.
    Making good money also helps with not being a crank.
Lexa was famous for her special-effects work for a certain previously mentioned
movie franchise, the one involving frozen kung fu and lots of ammunition. With plenty of income, Lexa
cool-hunted as a hobby, as a calling, even. Her goal in life was to influence
the manufacturers of MP3 players, cell phones, and handhelds to follow the
principles of good design— clean lines, ergonomic buttons, and softly pulsing
lights.
    "You haven't been over in a while, Hunter."
She glanced at Jen, wondering if I'd been busy.
    "Yeah, you know. Summer."
    "Did you get my e-mail about joining SHIFT?"
    "Uh, yeah."
    One more word about cranks: An Innovator friend of
Lexa's had this theory that uppercase was coming back in. That all the Webby
kids who'd never hit the shift key in their lives (except to type an @ sign)
were about to start putting capitals at the beginning of their sentences, maybe
even the first letter of their names and other proper
nouns. Lexa didn't really believe this seismic shift was imminent, but she
desperately wanted it to be. Typographical laziness was slowly destroying our
culture, according to j Lexa and her pals.
Inexactitude was death.
    I wasn't clear on the details of the theory. But the
concept behind SHIFT was that if enough Trendsetters started using capital
letters in their e-mails and posts, maybe the herd would follow.
    "You haven't joined up, have you?"
    I cleared my throat. "I'm sort of agnostic on the
whole SHIFT agenda."
    "Agnostic? You mean you aren't sure if capital
letters exist?" Lexa could be literal minded at times.
    "No, I believe in them. I've actually seen a few.
But as far as the need for a movement goes—"
    "What are you guys
talking about?"        i
    Lexa turned to Jen, eyes alight with the prospect of a
conversion. "You know how no one uses capitals anymore? Just dribbles
along in lowercase, like they don't know where the sentence starts?"
    "Yeah, I hate that."
    Lexa's well-brushed smile was blinding in the rosy
gloom. "Oh, you've got to get into SHIFT, then. What's your e-mail?"
    "Um, Lexa, can I interrupt?"
    She stopped, her handheld already unclipped from her
belt, ready to take Jen's contact information.
    "We came here about something important."
    "Sure, Hunter." She reluctantly returned the
tiny computer to her belt. "What's up?"
    "Mandy's disappeared."
    Lexa crossed her arms. "Disappeared?
Define."
    "She was supposed to meet us in Chinatown this
morning," I said. "She didn't show."
    "You tried calling her?"
    "We did, which is how we found this." I held
up Mandy's phone.

"It's hers," Jen said. "It was in an
abandoned building near where we were supposed to meet her."
    "That's a little creepy," Lexa admitted.
    "More than a little," Jen said.
"There's a picture on the phone. It's blurry but kind of scary. Like maybe
something happened to her."
    Lexa held out her hand. "May I?"
    "We were hoping you would."
    ************************************
    Using Lexa's cinematographic hardware to look at a
postage-stamp digital photo was like