Brave New Worlds

geeks at that. The Securitat treated the Order the way that Lawrence's old bosses treated the company sysadmins: expendable geeks who no one cared about—so long as nothing went wrong.
    No, there was no sense in telling the Securitat about the sixty-eight bytes.
    "Why would the Securitat poison its own data-streams?"
    "You know that when the Soviets pulled out of Finland, they found forty kilometers of wire-tapping wire in KGB headquarters? the building was only twelve stories tall! Spying begets spying. The worst, most dangerous enemy the Securitat has is the Securitat. "
    There were Securitat vans on the street around him, going past every now and again, eerily silent engines, playing their cheerful music. He stepped back into shadow, then thought better of it and stood under a pool of light.
    "OK, so it was a habit. How do I find him? No one in the sister's building will talk to me. "
    "You need to put them at their ease. Tell them the truth, that often works. "
    "You know how people feel about the Order out here?" He thought of Posy. "I don't know if the truth is going to work here. "
    "You've been in the order for sixteen years. You're not just some fumble-tongued outcast anymore. Go talk to them. "
    "But—"
    "Go, Lawrence. Go. You're a smart guy, you'll figure it out. "
    He went. Residents were coming home every few minutes now, carrying grocery bags, walking dogs, or dragging their tired feet. He almost approached a young woman, then figured that she wouldn't want to talk to a strange man on the street at night. He picked a guy in his thirties, wearing jeans and a huge old vintage coat that looked like it had come off the eastern front.
    "'Scuse me," he said. "I'm trying to find someone who used to live here. "
    The guy stopped and looked Lawrence up and down. He had a handsome sweater on underneath his coat, design-y and cosmopolitan, the kind of thing that made Lawrence think of Milan or Paris. Lawrence was keenly aware of his generic Order-issued suit, a brown, rumpled, ill-fitting thing, topped with a polymer coat that, while warm, hardly flattered.
    "Good luck with that," he said, then started to move past.
    "Please," Lawrence said. "I'm—I'm not used to how things are around here. There's probably some way I could ask you this that would put you at your ease, but I don't know what it is. I'm not good with people. But I really need to find this person, she used to live here. "
    The man stopped, looked at him again. He seemed to recognize something in Lawrence, or maybe it was that he was disarmed by Lawrence's honesty.
    "Why would you want to do that?"
    "It's a long story," he said. "Basically, though: I'm a monk from the Order of Reflective Analytics and one of our guys has disappeared. His sister used to live here—maybe she still does—and I wanted to ask her if she knew where I could find him. "
    "Let me guess, none of my neighbors wanted to help you. "
    "You're only the second guy I've asked, but yeah, pretty much. "
    "Out here in the real world, we don't really talk about each other to strangers. Too much like being a snitch. Lucky for you, my sister's in the Order, out in Oregon, so I know you're not all a bunch of snoops and stoolies. Who're you looking for?"
    Lawrence felt a rush of gratitude for this man. "Anja Krotosky, number 11-J?"
    "Oh," the man said. "Well, yeah, I can see why you'd have a hard time with the neighbors when it comes to old Anja. She was well-liked around here, before she went. "
    "Where'd she go? When?"
    "What's your name, friend?"
    "Lawrence. "
    "Lawrence, Anja went . Middle of the night kind of thing. No one heard a thing. The CCTVs stopped working that night. Nothing on the drive the next day. No footage at all. "
    "Like she skipped out?"
    "They stopped delivering flyers to her door. There's only one power stronger than direct marketing. "
    "The Securitat took her?"
    "That's what we figured. Nothing left in her place. Not a stick of furniture. We don't talk about it much. Not the thing that it pays to take an interest in. "
    "How long ago?"
    "Two years ago," he said. A few more residents pushed past them. "Listen, I approve of what you people do in there, more or less. It's good that there's a place for the people who don't—you know, who don't have a place out here. But the way you make your living. I told my sister about this, the last time she visited, and she got very angry with me. She didn't see the difference between watching yourself and being watched.