The Artificial Mirage by T. Warwick Page B

older than sixteen, but there were ten of them. They hadn’t targeted the Mercedes because of its security features, but Keith wondered why they had avoided the fake Lexus. Then he saw the driver with what looked like a shotgun hanging slightly out of the window. The kids thought they had found an easy target. He split the swarm into three with a cutting gesture of his right hand, which also created two additional video screens in his AR vision, and went after the kids three at a time with a darting formation that would zoom in on each of them. Wasps were designed to distract one or two assailants in the event of a street attack to facilitate escape, but this was something different. The driver pulled out a small dagger, but Keith motioned that he shouldn’t get out of the car. He brought up the Dragonfly app and deployed them. They were larger and not as fast, but the Wasps were providing sufficient distraction. The deployment of the three Dragonflies brought up three more video screens in a concave pattern that didn’t block his line of sight.He got them aloft at twenty feet in the air to get an aerial perspective of the situation. The Wasps were keeping the youths occupied. He brought a Dragonfly down to six feet and zapped the car with its electroshock feature. He could see from the one that had remained aloft that the kids had all been stunned, and the traffic ahead was easing. He entered the return command for the Wasps and Dragonflies, and they flew back in like a gentle breeze. He slapped the driver on the shoulder and told him to go. There might have been a Wasp or two left outside, but they were cheaper and easier to replace than Dragonflies.
    The car’s tires reflated, and they proceeded out of the tunnel to Batavia Bistro without finishing the chess game. He stepped onto the freshly painted white curb, and the Dragonflies and Wasps followed him like an extension of his aura through the black-tinted glass doors past the security guard, who gave a gentle nod. No need to be scanned. A bule in a Givenchy suit with an entourage of Wasps was always passed with a nod.
    It was unusual for Keith to eat lunch on Jakarta time, but Batavia Bistro was always open, even during Ramadan. He wandered in, getting appreciative glances from the waitresses. Beneath the trench coat, he was wearing a three-piece tan linen suit, which meant he didn’t need to work hard and symbolized wealth in the harsh tropical heat.
    “It’s good to be clean. That’s the new wealth. Clean water. Clean food. No parasites. No infections. Everything’s fine,” Keith heard from a male British voice over the rumble of conversation and swells of raucous laughter, mostly British with pockets of Indonesian and Chinese.
    “You got all your vaccinations?” a fat British woman in a blue paisley blouse with pasty white skin blurted out as he approached the bar.
    “Fucking tarts,” said a man in a white dress shirt with two buttons undone. He was looking at a local woman in a black silk business dress, who was assiduously applying a toothpick to each tooth and subsequently wiping it on her light-blue cloth napkin.
    It was a rhetorical question, but Keith felt like answering. “They’re everywhere. What’s the difference? They’re warm and soft with taut skin. What else do you need?” He slapped the man on the back.
    The bar was an ancient marble stage with a mahogany backdrop. He ordered a chilled dry sherry as he waited for a liverwurst with a spiral of Iranian caviar on toasted rye bread. More sherry. Then rum. He took a biteof the sandwich, but he found the process of chewing to be too tedious to continue. He noticed a Chinese woman with a large black mole on the right side of her face and violet contacts. Her face glowed with sweat, which accentuated the dark rings under her eyes, a stark contrast to her chemically whitened skin and white cotton and linen business suit that extended far above her knees, revealing matching white legs.
    “What