Neo Feudal

Watchdog on a Leash

 El weaved her way to the young man. He saw her but didn't offer any sign of recognition. He kept looking at his phone while rolling his eyes and shaking his head, and all around him customers were walking into the coffee shop and receiving their orders promptly.

"Niles!" El declared loudly as she approached. "How's life?"

"Sucks," Niles grumbled.

El nodded and commanded her phone to order another coffee. A gentle tone sounded, and her order was served.

"I was thinking we should take a walk," she said.

Niles huffed impatiently until finally his phone sounded a friendly hum and he was able to pick up his order.

"Unless you wanted to drive," El added. "But I figure that thing doesn't agree with your car so well."

Niles shook his head. "It's still calibrating, or whatever it does to adjust to a foreign device."

El lead the way out into a clear morning filled with the thrumming, harmonious sounds of synchronization. Even if his car was working, she would have preferred the walk. Too much time indoors causes a person to lose perspective, and a Niles didn't get out much anyway. His website proved that much.

"How about you?" Niles asked. "Everything good?"

"Coffee's terrible," El said. "But that's a given anymore. Other than that, I have no complaints." She shrugged. "Life's life."

"Life in the four empires," Niles stated ruefully, "is hardly life."

"You're just mad because your new phone is stupid," El laughed.

"No, really." Niles said, jumping into a livelier display of his chronic disgruntlement. "It's like you have to give your whole life over to a master. Nothing functions without perfect synergy, and that can't be achieved unless you devote yourself to a single brand of everything. Even the places you shop, they're all owned by the same companies, and everything is linked through the remote of a single device, offering exclusives, discounts, specials and earlier availability of upgraded products and--"

El cut him off. She'd heard the rant before, and also read it once in Niles' blog. "I don't see how you can run your website without a reliable server. This is your – what, second phone in four months?"

Niles paused mid sentence and rapidly adjusted to the subject change. "Third in three," he corrected. "But I might be settling on one soon."

"Not what you have, I hope," El jabbed.

"No, not this. I'm hearing rumors of another new company that might be a real contender. Have you heard anything like this?" Niles glanced at the phone hovering on the other side of El's head.

She twisted a wry smile at him. "Tact and subtlety. That's what your readers are after, isn't it?"

"My readers are after the truth," Niles said aggressively. "Which is why they are my readers. We aren't the sort to move delicately around important issues that need to be addressed." He emphasized the last several syllables by pounding his coffee cup into his open hand and sloshing the lukewarm liquid onto the pavement.

"Yes," El said. "I still question your approach. But never mind that. You didn't ask to meet with me so I could tell you how to do your job. You want to know about my job."

"Anything that happens in the industry happens because mercenaries make it happen," Niles said.

"That's just not true," El chided. "I hope you haven't written that in your paper."

"You guys are always being tasked with shutting down upstarts and rogues. You steal new specs, you destroy research notes, and there's rumors that the deaths of several project developers are escalating into industry blood feuds. Security forces are quietly being upgraded to private armies, and the syn-cons are about to literally go to war over the next new platform. But they're just there to back up you guys, the hired help that's already the hammer and nails of the industry. More hammer than nails, the way I see it."

"Is this something that you plan on publishing?" El asked, trying to keep her voice playful.

"No," Niles said as if it were one of the larger disappointments in his life. "I'm smarter than that. You're my only source for the gritty details."

"There it is," El announced. "I was wondering when you'd get around to it."

"I need to know more about your next operation. Not just the statistics that anyone could find out."

El snorted. "I give you as much as I do because anyone could have found it out. Anything that points to me as the source is going to get me blacklisted, and that's no good for either of us. What you pay for is to get that information before anyone else."

"I know what I pay for," Niles squirmed and looked over at an obnoxious advertisement that looped a video of a man yelling at an electrical outlet. "I'll pay you more."

"No," El said. "In fact, I might be giving you less information than usual on this next job. It's a little more sensitive."

"I already know what your next job is," Niles said with more than a hint of brag. "I know about Masquerade and their Usurpyr. People would love to control over their own lives returned to them. I'm going to give them the full story of why they can't have it. That way when war breaks out in their streets between Regent and Masquerade security personnel, they'll know the reason."

"You won't," El said sternly. "I'm not going to tell you anything, and you can get your information from the dull security goons. If I do my job, and I will, Masquerade won't be able to pay it's security guards enough to--"

"Masquerade could be the thing that saves us," Niles said.

"Are you writing advertisements now?"

"The way things are now, the syn-cons are putting walls up between neighbors. Maybe today it's that Regent subscribers get discounted prices at Regent-owned stores, and Infinity has to pay full price. But before long It'll be that you can only go to Regent stores and use Regent products if you have a Regent device. And Infinity to Infinity. It's like they're nations, and the customers are becoming patriots. Did you know there were fourteen killings last month in this city alone that started in arguments about brand preference?"

"That's pathetic," El scoffed.

"That's where our world is going," Niles said, "and people aren't seeing the truth of it or being explained why. They just think, 'oh, if I were there I would have taken this or that side.' We're already accepting these separations. I'm not the only one noticing it either. Some bloggers put together a survey that asked if people were more or less likely to have a serious relationship with a subscriber of the same or different syn-con. They found that people are more attracted to subscribers of the same syn-cons, and less attracted to subscribers of different ones. This is mostly due to the cross-platform communication fees, it being difficult to go places together if one person has to wait several minutes for competitor updates, and the nightmare of merging two essentially incompatible lives.

"People are so impatient," El said.

"People like their lives to run smoothly," Niles said. "And from what I hear, the new platform from Masquerade will let that happen, no matter where you go, or how you get there, or what you want to do when you do."

"Again, are they paying you for these plugs?"

"Honestly, I just want to see a new player who's willing to shake things up, but since you mercenaries aren't going to let that happen, I'd like to let people know about it. Maybe if they know it's possible live without these walls, they'll demand it. And maybe if they can see what will happen if we keep going the way we are... I mean armies, El!"

"Or they might just see you as the raving lunatic that you are and dismiss your publication entirely," El suggested. Niles started to protest and looked like he might ramp into another rant. "Okay! Okay! I'll..." El though for a minute. "I don't know, but I'll think about what I can do to help. I see where you're coming from."

"That's all I ask," Niles said with a weary smile.

"You ask for a lot more," El corrected, "but this is all you get."