Axon Clips Chapter 8

Kamal: "Coral is Gone"

• Audio Compilation 6min 49sec

Genetic profile

Genetic profile
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(working on chatter)
Kamal: Peekaboo you bastard... I'll find you... I'll find you peeping tom sucker-- ghost me, huh?
Sophia: Kamal?
Kamal: Sophia. What are you doing here?
Sophia: Uh, just dropping by. Hiro told me where to find you, and I thought that we
could have lunch or something.
Kamal: I'm pretty busy actually.
Sophia: Oh? What are you working on?
Kamal: Laura. Her accident.
Sophia: Who's Laura?
Kamal: My sister.
Sophia: I thought her name was Yasmine.
Kamal: Sophia, it turns out your juvenile MCF victim has a real interesting genetic profile. If you look hard, you get 2 distinct groups. The congenitally disfunctional, and a much smaller group of ultra-high achievers.
Sophia: Like your sist--
Kamal: --shhhh... (whispers) people are listening.
Sophia: Kamal, there's nobody here.
Kamal: Not here, here... (taps chatter) Let me show you something.

Parabolic lemonade failure

Parabolic lemonade failure
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Kamal: The cafeteria's a better place to talk. Realistically they can't have a live person monitoring every minute of my day.
Sophia: Monitoring?
Kamal: It's got to be a program. Probably not even an AI, just a simple keyword scavenger. An environment like this will make it harder for the voice recognition to work.
Sophia: Why do you think someone is ghosting you?
Kamal: --I don't think, I know. Someone is ghosting me. I know the signs.
Sophia: Kamal...
Kamal: Remember that headset I won in the lottery?
Sophia: You mean the chatter you won in the raf--
Kamal: --keywords, Sophia.
Sophia: Oh. Oh... I get it.
Kamal: There was no raffle.
Sophia: Lottery.
Kamal: Right, it was a setup. Someone just wanted me to have a particular--
(together) --Headset.
Kamal: Right.
Sophia: You don't think Aiden--
Kamal: --No. No, I don't. Aiden couldn't dream of doing the kind of ghosting that's been happening to me.
Sophia: Then...
Kamal: I think it's someone who's interested in parabolic lemonade failure.
Sophia: Parabolic..? oh...
Kamal: Right.

Going offline

Going offline
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Sophia: Your...brother? The people who took your brother on that trip.
Kamal: Exactly.
Sophia: Wow.
Kamal: Let's get some food.
Sophia: What are you going to do?
Kamal: I'm thinking about going offline.
Sophia: Don't!
Kamal: Why?
Sophia: It's dangerous. Cars won't drive you, hospitals won't treat you, the automatic door at the grocery store won't slide open for you, and the cashier won't take your money. You don't know what it's like to be off the grid.
Kamal: And you do? (to a vender) Can I have a piece of the cornbread?
Sophia: It's not you Kamal... you'd be like a fish on dry land without your chat.

Abracadabra

Abracadabra
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Kamal: Hang on... (signal/offline) And presto! Now I'm offline. As far as the grid knows, I've just disappeared.
Sophia: If someone really is listening to you, won't they notice that you just vanished?
Kamal/Offline: I spent the last few days building a little Franken-Kamal out of my own bitstream traces.
Sophia: I'm going to pretend I understood that to keep you from explaining it again.
Kamal/Offline: Good call.
Sophia: So what if they're listening to me too?
Kamal/Offline: Funny you should ask. I rigged a small... do you mind?
Sophia: I don't want to be offline.
Kamal/Offline: It's just a test.
Sophia: Alright.
Kamal/Offline: Abracadabra! (signal/offline) Congratulations! As far as the world knows, you're dead.

Chatter to chatter

Chatter to chatter
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Kamal/Offline: You're a ghost!
Sophia/Offline: So now you think you're safe?
Kamal/Offline: Theoretically I guess you could build a program that would jump from chatter to chatter, tracking us everywhere we went, but it would have to be so unimaginably powerful...
Sophia/Offline: We aren't right now.
Kamal/Offline: Yeah.
Sophia/Offline: I know that feeling.
Kamal/Offline: Looks like it's southern food today.
Sophia/Offline: Are those real instant mashed potatoes, or the other kind?
Waiter: Didja see a maitre'd when ya walked in?
Sophia/Offline: I guess I'll have the... uh... chicken-fried tofu.
Kamal/O