Free Spark: A Novel by John Twelve Hawks

turned around and followed a path back to the cabins. A few hundred yards from the camp, I heard a high-pitched yowling sound and my curiosity led me toward the green light that glowed through the gaps between the trees. Another wavering yowl. I forced my way through some bushes and found Lorcan Tate standing in a clearing.
    He had pierced a dog’s front legs with a sharpened rod, attached a rope, and then hung his captive from a tree. The dog howled and struggled and twisted its head around as Lorcan jabbed at its belly with a hunting knife.
    Lorcan heard my boots crunch through some leaves and spun around. I was blinded for a few seconds by his kerosene lantern, so I pulled off the goggles. “Where’d you get the dog?”
    “Took it from a farm about two miles from here.”
    “What are you doing?”
    Lorcan jabbed at the dog with his knife. “Having fun. That’s all. What I do is none of your goddamn business.”
    The dog’s mouth was open and its body glistened with blood. As it panted for air, it showed sharp teeth and a lolling tongue. “Dogs are at the top of the pyramid,” I said. “They’re higher than you or me.”
    “You’re fucking crazy.…”
    I drew the semiautomatic pistol I had taken from the arms locker and fired. The hollow-point bullet ripped through the dog—killing it instantly. Its empty Shell spun around on the rope, and then spun back again.
    Clutching the knife, Lorcan charged me, but I raised the gun and pointed it at his head.
    He stopped. “You gonna kill me?”
    “Yes. If that’s necessary.”
    Lorcan lowered the knife and shook his head. “I just practice on the dogs. You’d be a lot more fun.”
    I fired again, hitting the dog’s body a second time, and it swung back and forth like a pendulum.

    At Fifty-Ninth Street, I followed the stairs underground and found a nubot sitting inside the clerk’s booth. The first subway bots were designed with squares and rectangles. They had blinking lights for eyes and resembled wind-up toys. But the development of SynSkin had been a breakthrough for bot appearance. The nubots looked human; their tongues moved when they talked, their eyes blinked, and their chests moved as if they were breathing. Like all nubots, the clerk in the booth was controlled by a reactive intelligence program that gave it the ability to learn from its experiences and change its behavior.
    Two Japanese-made nubot models had been purchased by the MTA. One was an overweight black woman named Rowena who was programmed to chat about the weather and make bland compliments about your appearance. But the booth at Fifty-Ninth Street used the second model: a slender Latino man named Sergio who smiled and made jokes.
    The growlers hated nubots, and the Plexiglas booth had been scratched with glass cutters and splattered with paint bombs. I stood in line, approached the window, and slid a cash card through the sensor slot.
    “A three-day pass, please.”
    Sergio’s eyebrows moved and the corners of his mouth turned upward. “It’s a pleasure to serve you, sir. Will you activate your card today?”
    “Yes.”
    The voice sensor had already received my request, but Sergio pretended to type instructions with a keyboard. A few seconds later, a yellow travel card slid out of the slot.
    “Have a great day, sir. I hope you enjoy exploring our wonderful city.”
    “You’re a machine.”
    “That’s right, my friend. And I’m a damn good-looking one.…”
    As I stepped away from the booth, the bot’s eyes followed my movements.

I left my loft at eight o’clock that evening and walked down Broadway to the Financial District. I disliked visiting the area in the daytime, when the sidewalks were crowded with people who pushed past you and jabbed you with their elbows. But at night, surrounded by the skyscrapers, Wall Street was a clear and quiet maze of dark canyons. Limousines and black town cars idled outside office buildings, their exhaust pipes giving off puffs of white