The Artificial Mirage by T. Warwick Page A

taking each step together. He passed them with a quick smile and closed his eyes for the remaining flights of stairs as he traced the wall.
    A swell of ricocheting sound waves greeted him as he entered the large marble-floored lobby. The only light came from the projections of the large Miro paintings on the white stucco walls, one of which was full of speckle and heavily distorted. The crystal chandeliers above were barely apparent. Several small kids in pajamas wrestled on the worn red velvet couches that lined the side leading to the reception area. Gathered around the reception desk, a group of women in matching white headscarves with a corporate logo he didn’t recognize were chatting with big AR bubbles above their heads bearing a watermark of the same corporate logo. Walking out the electric glass door—which had already been pried open—he noticed a young boy in clothes so dirty they were shiny sleeping next to a large vase. The vase had turned over, and dark soil and the withered remains of a fern littered the entranceway. Three brown lady boys with hair bands and bobby pins in their dyed blond hair came swooping by him, and one of them kicked the fern just as he turned to look for a taxi. The Bats, Dragonflies, and Wasps that had been clinging to his black silk trench coat took flight and swarmed around him. A taxi arrived abruptly at his feet, just inches from the curb, ads for a new clove cigarette swirling around in an AR promotion with the added effect of an amorphous blue smoke cloud that hovered around it. Keith paused before closing the door to allow his entourage to enter and handed the driver 400,000 rupiah in four wadded notes and told him to pay the toll for the tunnel. It was rare for someone to have more than two Dragonflies, much less twenty Wasps and two Bats. In case of an attack, the Dragonflies and Bats could emit electrical currents and tag the assailants with permanent orange ink and film the entire incident for police review. Additionally, his twenty Wasps that tagged along with the swarm could be remarkably effective as a distraction in the event of an attack; they were called Wasps™, but they were triple the size of an actual wasp. Wasps to protect WASPs, he had once joked. But they didn’t understand that kind of joke in Jakarta. It didn’t even register in their AR translation apps.
    The tunnel system had been completed in record time because of the use of enhanced robotic tunneling equipment that planned and anticipated and completed assignments without stopping to cool off for more than an hour in a twenty-four-hour period. Still, in a country where labor had remained cheap, the price of all that robotic labor required a drastic repayment plan involving hefty tolls. Meandering through slow-moving traffic and smog, he played a game of chess with the driver on the windshield HUD as the car nudged its way forward, maintaining its programmed half-meter distance from the car in front of it. As they approached the smooth new asphalt of the tunnel entrance, the driver switched to manual. He deleted a few Matchbook chat sessions that had popped up before they renewed their chess game as the tunnel’s system took over. After a few minutes, the car slowed to a standstill between the glossy gray walls. An Indonesian remake of an old Lexus model was behind them, and a brand-new white Mercedes was in front.
    “It’s unusual—” Keith didn’t get to finish his comment about tunnel traffic. The car started rocking, and the driver looked at Keith and started yelling something indistinguishable. There was a booming sound as the tires were punctured simultaneously. The rocking continued, and Keith lurched over to the other side of the taxi. He brought up his Wasp app and lowered the window. They rose from their resting positions on his arms and darted out. He directed the small swarm with his silver and turquoise stylus ring and saw an embedded video of their line of sight. They were kids—none