Daemon

street
.’
    He obeyed and found himself moving into a crowded retail plaza ringed with national chain stores. The carnival atmosphere was augmented by street performers wearing photo IDs – proof that their family-friendly, drug-tested talents were on an officially sanctioned list in the management office.
    The plaza was packed with consumers.
    The Voice spoke again.
‘Waypoint nine attained. Stand by … stand by. Vector 271. Proceed.’
    He turned in place, looking closely at a handheld GPS screen until he was facing 271 degrees. Then he proceeded at a normal walking pace as people jostled past him.
    ‘Report ready status of assembly.’
    The Daemon’s workshop was open for business. He slipped one hand into his E-Pouch and removed a grooved steel machine part, six inches long. He wrapped his hand around it and kept walking vector 271. ‘Assembly ready.’
    ‘Prepare to tender.’
    He could see the target approaching through the crowd – a twenty-something white kid in parachute pants and a sweatshirt bearing a university acronym. He had the calm, composed look of a Daemon courier. They were on a collision course as people swirled around them like random electrons. The kid extended his right hand as he came forward. They were just feet away.
    ‘Tender assembly on phrase: ‘Hey, Luther.’ Confirm.’
    The kid came right up to him, holding forward a different steel part. A cell phone headset was now visible on his close-cropped head. The kid nodded. ‘Hey, Luther.’
    Both men extended their hands and slid the steel parts together. They mated perfectly with a satisfying
click
.
    ‘Assembly confirmed.’
    A pleasant chime sounded over the line. ‘
Operation complete. Twenty network credits. Demobilize
.’
    The kid took control of the combined parts and continued walking.
    The Voice came over the phone headset. ‘
Assembly stage two. Vector 168. Prepare to tender
.’
    The kid held the assembly down at his side, turned to the appropriate compass direction, and proceeded through the crowd at a brisk walk. In a few moments he and a young woman locked on to each other. She was big-boned, dressed like a businessperson. Utterly invisible to most men. The kid vectored in.
    ‘Tender assembly on phrase: ‘Afternoon, Rudy.’ Confirm.’
    The woman nodded as she came up to him, a flip phone handset held to her cheek. ‘Afternoon, Rudy.’
    He placed the two-part assembly into her hand and disappeared into the crowd. ‘Assembly confirmed.’
    A pleasant chime sounded over the line.
‘Operation complete. Twenty network credits. Demobilize.’
    She snapped the kid’s two parts into a yellow plastic base and moved through the crowd, following her new vector.
    As he headed back to the parking structure, the kid imagined the tactical assembly now under way; like swarming nanobots amid the mass of shoppers, the Daemon’s distributed assembly plant ran half a dozen independent lines, with no individual having knowledge of anything more than the few seconds in front of them and the mechanics of the singleassembly for which they’d be responsible. The parts arrived in place at the moment they were required, The Voice vectoring them into a collision course. Assemblers came and went, passing the assembly on to the next worker in the chain after confirming completion of their step. Redundancy gave high probability that sufficient parts would arrive on station at the appropriate moment, and that waylaid assemblers could be quickly replaced.
    What he didn’t know was what they were building. He wondered if he’d ever know.
    In the battered lobby of a C-grade office building, a (now) debt-free graduate student faced the wall and clicked a methane-oxide fuel cell battery into place inside a form-fitting plastic handle.
    The Voice spoke to him over his earpiece. ‘
Confirm assembly completion
.’
    He powered the unit up and waited for a diagnostics check. A green light came on. Ready. He lowered the assembly out of sight. ‘Assembly complete.’
    A pause. ‘
Stand by … stand by …
’
    He looked around the lobby. It was a typical two-story box in a low-end tech park. Security consisted of locked doors with mag-card swipes at the entrances. In other words: no security. Long halls laid with orange indoor-outdoor carpeting crossed each other in a barren atrium in the center of the building.
    He waited patiently in a water company uniform, complete with photo ID badge and water-bottle-laden handcart as The Voice kept