Brasyl

The brothers de Freitas meet twenty-three minutes later on the on-ramp at Intersection 7. Twenty-three minutes for the Brooklin Bandeira to close in, to narrow the circle of possibility down to machine-pistol range. Edson’s been checking his custom-fit rearview cameras for oil-slick-black segurança hunting bikes. He could get away from them on the Yam, take it places their big bulky machines could not, but not Gerson, flogging the ako engine on that shitty little putt-putt. Edson can hardly believe he once rode that thing. Gantry cameras read his license plate; hurtling satellites debit his account. They don’t make it easy for legitimate men of business.

And there it is, looming out of the traffic, the barquentine of the quantumeiros: a big forty-to

Smoking metalhead applauds.

Thirty seconds later Gerson skids to a halt on the platform, pale and shaking. Edson tries to imagine what the commuters on the São Caetano rodovia make of a male with a pink handbag around his neck driving onto the back of a moving truck. Probably reckons it’s the telenovelas and are looking round for the flittercams: Hey! We’re on A World Somewhere, we really are!

Death Metal raises the ramp and pulls the shutter down with a clatter.

Recessed mood-lights flood on. Edson feels his eyes widen behind his wraparound I-shades: The rear of the container is docking space; the forward twothirds is split-level business accommodation. The lower floor-reception-is Karma Cafe kitsch, all shag rugs, leather beanbags, inflatable chairs, and zebra-skin sofas on spindly legs. There a battery of rollscreens tuned to sports and news cha

A floppy-haired queen in a good suit and shiny shirt unfolds from a sofa.

He has pointy pirate shoes, immaculately polished.

“So this is the handbag?” The bicha turns it over in his hands. “I suppose it was going to happen sooner or later as quantum technology gets cheaper. It would have been a lot simpler just to have thrown it away.”

“My brother can make money out of this.”

The truck accelerates; the seguranças have a fix on the arfid and are ru

“We can certainly blank this for you. It’s not the most up-to-date model. Fia.” You can fall in love with someone for their shoes. These are gold jacaré-skin wedge heels, strappy at the ankle. They descend the top rum of the spiral staircase. Above them, slim ankles, good calves not too full, Capri-cut tapered pant-bottoms with a little dart in the side and white piping ru

“Good bag,” she comments.

Edson opens his mouth and nothing comes out. It’s not love. It’s not even lust. The closest emotion to it he can recognize is glamour. If he had a religious cell in his body, he might know it as worship, in that word’s oldest, truesr sense: worth-ship. She fascinates him. She is all the things he hopes to be. He wants to orbit in her gravity, circle her thrilling world and thrilling clothes and thrilling friends and thrilling places to go and do and be and see. She takes the jeito he thinks he has earned and spreads it all over the road behind her like a mashed cat. She makes him feel like favela scum. That’s all right. Compared to her he is, he is.

“They’re about two minutes out,” chides the bicha. “You want to give me that bag?”

“Um, can I watch?”

“There’s nothing to see. You’ll be disappointed.”

“I don’t think I will. I’d like to see.”

“You will. Everybody is.”

“About a minute and a half,” says bicha-boy. Gerson is having a cafezinho.

She lets him carry the bag upstairs.

“Fia? Fia what’”

There’s barely space for the two swivel chairs among the technology. The cubicle is swagged with enough cable to rig a suspension bridge.

“Kishida.” She says it fast, with Japanese emphases though her accent is pure Paulistana. Fia sets the Giorelli on an illuminated white plastic tray under a set of micromanipulator arms. She sweeps her Blu Ma

“I know this tune, I really like it. Do you like baile’” Edson says, twitching his muscles to the house beat. “There’s a gafieira on Friday; I’ve a client doing a set.”

“Could you just shut up for thirty seconds while I try and do some work?”

The arms locate and lock. Icons appear on Fia’s glasses: her pupils dance across the display, issuing commands. Edson finds his attention hooked by a glowing object beneath the glass surface of the desk. He cups his hands around his face and presses it to the desktop. The glass is cool enough for his breath to dew. Far below, seemingly farther than the architecture of the trailer allows — below the floor of the lab, below the club lounge, below the truck chassis and the surface of the road — is a shifting, morphing glow.

“What’s that?” He lowers his brow until it touches the cool glass. “Reality,” says Fia. “Quantum dots in superposition. The light is vacuum fluctuation photons leaking through from some of the parallel states in which the computation is being made.”

“Ah, you’re the physicist,” Edson says, and bites his tongue: is it the pill that is making this muscle that has never let him down before speak only stupid? She looks at him as if he has shit on her glass desktop. She reaches across Edson to hit a key. The robot probes move in a fraction of a hair, then withdraw to their standby position.

“Okay, that’s it. Safe and anonymous.”

“What, you mean, that quick?”

“I told you you would be disappointed.”