Part 64 (1/2)

Lester nodded. ”Yeah, I figured that. Openness always costs something. But we get a lot of benefits out of openness too. The way it works now is that no one ride can change more than five percent of the status quo within 24 hours without a manual approval. The problem was that the Brazilians opened, like, *fifty* rides at the same time, and each of them zeroed out and tried to sync that and between them they did way more than 100 percent. It'd be pretty easy to set things up so that no more than five percent can be changed, period, within a 24-hour period, without manual approval.”

”If you can do that, why not set every change to require approval?”

Kettlewell said.

”Well, for starters because we'd end up spending all our time clicking OK for five-centimeter adjustments to prop-positioning. But more importantly, it's because the system is all about community -- we're not in charge, we're just part of the network.”

Kettlewell made a sour face and muttered something. Tjan patted his arm again. ”You guys *are* in charge, as much as you'd like not to be. You're the ones facing the legal ha.s.sles, you're the ones who invented it.”

”We didn't, really,” Lester said. ”This was a real standing on the shoulders of giants project. We made use of a bunch of stuff that was on the shelf already, put it together, and then other people helped us refine it and get it working well. We're just part of the group, like I keep saying.” He had a thought. ”Besides, if we were in charge, Brazil wouldn't have been able to zero us out.

”You guys are being really weird and suit-y about this, you know? I've fixed the problem: no one can take us down like this again. It just won't happen. I've put the fix on the version-server for the codebase, so everyone else can deploy it if they want to. The problem's solved. We'll be shut for an hour or two, but who cares? You're missing the big picture: Brazil opened fifty rides *yesterday*! I mean, it sucks that we didn't notice until it screwed us up, but Brazil's got it all online. Who's next? China? India?”

”Russia?” Kettlewell said, looking at the door that Suzanne had left by. He was clearly trying to needle Lester.

Lester ignored him. ”I'd love to go to Brazil and check out how they've done it. I speak a little Portuguese even -- enough to say, 'Are you 18 yet?' anyway.”

”You're *weird*,” Lyenitchka said. Ada giggled and said, ”Weird!”

Eva shook her head. ”The kids have got a point,” she said. ”You people are all a little weird. Why are you fighting? Tjan, Landon, you came here to manage the business side of things, and that's what you're doing. Lester, you're in charge of the creative and technical stuff and that's what you're doing. Without Lester, you two wouldn't have any business to run. Without these guys, you'd be in jail or something by now. Make peace, because you're on the same side. I've got enough children to look after here.”

Kettlewell snapped a nod at her. ”Right as ever, darling. OK, I apologize, all right?”

”Me too,” Lester said. ”I was kidding about going to Brazil -- at least while Perry's still away.”

”He's coming home,” Tjan said. ”He called me this morning. He's bringing the girl, too.”

”Yoko!” Lester said, and grinned. ”OK, someone should get online and find out how all the other rides are coping with this. I'm sure they're going nutso out there.”

”You do that,” Kettlewell said. ”We've got another call with the lawyers in ten minutes.”

”How's all that going?”

”Let me put it this way,” Kettlewell said, and for a second he was back in his glory days, slick and formidable, a shark. ”I liquidated my shares in Disney this morning. They're down fifty points since the NYSE opened. You wait until Tokyo wakes up, they're going to bail and bail and bail.”

Lester smiled back. ”OK, well that's good, then.”

He hunkered down with a laptop and got his homebrew wireless rig up and running -- a card would have been cheaper, but his rig gave him lots of robustness against malicious interference, multi-path and plain old attenuation -- and got his headline reader running.

He set to reading the posts and dispelling the popups that tried to call his attention to this or that. His filters had lots to tell him about, and the areas of his screen designated for different interests were starting to pinken as they acc.u.mulated greater urgency.

He waved them away and concentrated on getting through to all the ride-maintainers who had questions about his patches. But there was one pink area that wouldn't go. It was his serendipity zone, where things that didn't match his filters but had lots of interestingness -- comments and reposts from people he paid attention to -- and some confluence with his keywords turned up.

Impatiently, he waved it up, and a page made of bits of LiveJournals and news reports and photo-streams a.s.sembled itself.

His eye fell first on the photos. But for the shock of black and neon green hair, he wouldn't have recognized the kid in the pictures as Death Waits. His face was a ruin. His nose was a b.l.o.o.d.y rose, his eyes were both swollen shut. One ear was ruined -- apparently he'd been dragged some distance with that side of his head on the ground. His cheeks were pulpy and bruised. Then he clicked through to the photos from where they'd found Death, before they'd cleaned him up in the ambulance, and he had to turn his head away and breathe deeply. Both legs and both arms were clearly broken, with at least one compound fracture. His crotch -- Jesus. Lester looked away again, then quickly closed the window.

He switched to text accounts from Death's friends who'd been to see him in the hospital. He would live, but he might not walk again. He was lucid, and he was telling stories about the man who'd beaten him --