Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (best books to read fiction txt) 📕

now "visible" to rival vampires, one of whom had been slowly sneaking up on us. At the last moment, I turned and saw her, arms spread, hissing at us, vamping it up in high style.

I threw my arms wide and hissed back at her, then pelted through the lobby, hopping over a leather sofa and deking around a potted plant, making her chase me. I'd scouted an escape route down through the stairwell to the basement health-club and I took it, shaking her off.

I didn't see him again that weekend, but I did relate the story to some of my fellow LARPers, who embroidered the tale and found lots of opportunities to tell it over the weekend.

The Italian magazine had a staffer who'd done her master's degree on Amish anti-technology communities in rural Pennsylvania, and she thought we sounded awfully interesting. Based on the notes and taped interviews of her boss from his trip to San Francisco, she wrote a fascinating, heart-wrenching article about these weird, juvenile cultists who were crisscrossing America in search of their "prince." Hell, people will print anything these days.

But the thing was, stories like that get picked up and republished. First it was Italian bloggers, then a few American bloggers. People across the country reported "sightings" of the Old People, though whether they were making it up, or whether others were playing the same game, I didn't know.

It worked its way up the media food-chain all the way to the New York Times, who, unfortunately, have an unhealthy appetite for fact-checking. The reporter they put on the story eventually tracked it down to the Monaco Hotel, who put them in touch with the LARP organizers, who laughingly spilled the whole story.

Well, at that point, LARPing got a lot less cool. We became known as the nation's foremost hoaxers, as weird, pathological liars. The press who we'd inadvertently tricked into covering the story of the Old People were now interested in redeeming themselves by reporting on how unbelievably weird we LARPers were, and that was when Charles let everyone in school know that Darryl and I were the biggest LARPing weenies in the city.

That was not a good season. Some of the gang didn't mind, but we did. The teasing was merciless. Charles led it. I'd find plastic fangs in my bag, and kids I passed in the hall would go "bleh, bleh" like a cartoon vampire, or they'd talk with fake Transylvanian accents when I was around.

We switched to ARGing pretty soon afterwards. It was more fun in some ways, and it was a lot less weird. Every now and again, though, I missed my cape and those weekends in the hotel.

The opposite of esprit d'escalier is the way that life's embarrassments come back to haunt us even after they're long past. I could remember every stupid thing I'd ever said or done, recall them with picture-perfect clarity. Any time I was feeling low, I'd naturally start to remember other times I felt that way, a hit-parade of humiliations coming one after another to my mind.

As I tried to concentrate on Masha and my impending doom, the Old People incident kept coming back to haunt me. There'd been a similar, sick, sinking doomed feeling then, as more and more press outlets picked up the story, as the likelihood of someone figuring out that it had been me who'd sprung the story on the stupid Italian editor in the designer jeans with crooked seams, the starched collarless shirt, and the oversized metal-rimmed glasses.

There's an alternative to dwelling on your mistakes. You can learn from them.

It's a good theory, anyway. Maybe the reason your subconscious dredges up all these miserable ghosts is that they need to get closure before they can rest peacefully in humiliation afterlife. My subconscious kept visiting me with ghosts in the hopes that I would do something to let them rest in peace.

All the way home, I turned over this memory and the thought of what I would do about "Masha," in case she was playing me. I needed some insurance.

And by the time I reached my house -- to be swept up into melancholy hugs from Mom and Dad -- I had it.

The trick was to time this so that it happened fast enough that the DHS couldn't prepare for it, but with a long enough lead time that the Xnet would have time to turn out in force.

The trick was to stage this so that there were too many present to arrest us all, but to put it somewhere that the press could see it and the grownups, so the DHS wouldn't just gas us again.

The trick was to come up with something with the media friendliness of the levitation of the Pentagon. The trick was to to stage something that we could rally around, like 3,000 Berkeley students refusing to let one of their number be taken away in a police van.

The trick was to put the press there, ready to say what the police did, the way they had in 1968 in Chicago.

It was going to be some trick.

I cut out of school an hour early the next day, using my customary techniques for getting out, not caring if it would trigger some kind of new DHS checker that would result in my parents getting a note.

One way or another, my parents' last problem after tomorrow would be whether I was in trouble at school.

I met Ange at her place. She'd had to cut out of school even earlier, but she'd just made a big deal out of her cramps and pretended she was going to keel over and they sent her home.

We started to spread the word on Xnet. We sent it in email to trusted friends, and IMmed it to our buddy lists. We roamed the decks and towns of Clockwork Plunder and told our team-mates. Giving everyone enough information to get them to show up but not so much as to tip our hand to the DHS was tricky, but I thought I had just the right balance:

VAMPMOB TOMORROW

If you're a goth, dress to impress. If you're not a goth, find a goth and borrow some clothes. Think vampire.

The game starts at 8:00AM sharp. SHARP. Be there and ready to be divided into teams. The game lasts 30 minutes, so you'll have plenty of time to get to school afterward.

Location will be revealed tomorrow. Email your public key to [email protected] and check your messages at 7AM for the update. If that's too early for you, stay up all night. That's what we're going to do.

This is the most fun you will have all year, guaranteed.

Believe.

M1k3y

Then I sent a short message to Masha.

Tomorrow

M1k3y

A minute later, she emailed back:

I thought so. VampMob, huh? You work fast. Wear a red hat. Travel light.

What do you bring along when you go fugitive? I'd carried enough heavy packs around enough scout camps to know that every ounce you add cuts into your shoulders with all the crushing force of gravity with every step you take -- it's not just one ounce, it's one ounce that you carry for a million steps. It's a ton.

"Right," Ange said. "Smart. And you never take more than three days' worth of clothes, either. You can rinse stuff out in the sink. Better to have a spot on your t-shirt than a suitcase that's too big and heavy to stash under a plane-seat."

She'd pulled out a ballistic nylon courier bag that went across her chest, between her breasts -- something that made me get a little sweaty -- and slung diagonally across her back. It was roomy inside, and she'd set it down on the bed. Now she was piling clothes next to it.

"I figure that three t-shirts, a pair of pants, a pair of shorts, three changes of underwear, three pairs of socks and a sweater will do it."

She dumped out her gym bag and picked out her toiletries. "I'll have to remember to stick my toothbrush in tomorrow morning before I head down to Civic Center."

Watching her pack was impressive. She was ruthless about it all. It was also freaky -- it made me realize that the next day, I was going to go away. Maybe for a long time. Maybe forever.

"Do I bring my Xbox?" she asked. "I've got a ton of stuff on the hard-drive, notes and sketches and email. I wouldn't want it to fall into the wrong hands."

"It's all encrypted," I said. "That's standard with ParanoidXbox. But leave the Xbox behind, there'll be plenty of them in LA. Just create a Pirate Party account and email an image of your hard-drive to yourself. I'm going to do the same when I get home."

She did so, and queued up the email. It was going to take a couple hours for all the data to squeeze through her neighbor's WiFi network and wing its way to Sweden.

Then she closed the flap on the bag and tightened the compression straps. She had something the size of a soccer-ball slung over her back now, and I stared admiringly at it. She could walk down the street with that under her shoulder and no one would look twice -- she looked like she was on her way to school.

"One more thing," she said, and went to her bedside table and took out the condoms. She took the strips of rubbers out of the box and opened the bag and stuck them inside, then gave me a slap on the ass.

"Now what?" I said.

"Now we go to your place and do your stuff. It's time I met your parents, no?"

She left the bag amid the piles of clothes and junk all over the floor. She was ready to turn her back on all of it, walk away, just to be with me. Just to support the cause. It made me feel brave, too.

Mom was already home when I got there. She had her laptop open on the kitchen table and was answering email while talking into a headset connected to it, helping some poor Yorkshireman and his family acclimate to living in Louisiana.

I came through the door and Ange followed, grinning like mad, but holding my hand so tight I could feel the bones grinding together. I didn't know what she was so worried about. It wasn't like she was going to end up spending a lot of time hanging around with my parents after this, even if it went badly.

Mom hung up on the Yorkshireman when we got in.

"Hello, Marcus," she said, giving me a kiss on the cheek. "And who is this?"

"Mom, meet Ange. Ange, this is my Mom, Lillian." Mom stood up and gave Ange a hug.

"It's very good to meet you, darling," she said, looking her over from top to bottom. Ange looked pretty acceptable, I think. She dressed well, and low-key, and you could tell how smart she was just by looking at her.

"A pleasure to meet you, Mrs Yallow," she said. She sounded very confident and self-assured. Much better than I had when I'd met her mom.

"It's Lillian, love," she said. She was taking in every detail. "Are you staying for dinner?"

"I'd love that," she said.

"Do you eat meat?" Mom's pretty acclimated to living in California.

"I eat anything that doesn't eat me first," she said.

"She's a hot-sauce junkie," I said. "You could serve her old tires and she'd eat 'em if she could smother them in