Free Guardian of Night by Tony Daniel

occupation of Sri Lanka back in the 2040s. Sri Lanka didn’t exist as a recognizable landmass anymore, much less a country.
    Shit. Coalbridge tamped down the adrenaline surge he’d just endured and took a mental moment to stifle his immediate urge—which had been to go and rescue somebody.
    He took a longer look at the self-immolators. Looked like three men and three women, from what he could tell. Young. Dressed in Peepsie counterculture garb, now aflame. He took a closer look. Very young. They were teenagers. Aha.
    Nobody was dying here.
    These kids were protected by dermal churn—called “salt,” after the military version of the same nanotech. Salt itself was not extremely expensive—Coalbridge had a coating—but the charger subscription necessary to make it effective day in and day out was not cheap. Coalbridge didn’t know how much such subscriptions cost these days, but he’d bet his captain’s bar that these were rich kids, the children of doctors, lawyers, NGO brass, and government bureaucrats, probably, whose families could afford the kind of electrostatic subscription and advanced coating that would permit such a display of political theater.
    Salt could be set to deliver or to stifle nerve stimuli, pain in particular, through the coating. Yet salt wasn’t magic. Even if the kids had turned off their nerves, salt could hardly prevent the heat damage from a gas flame.
    Hence the charming barbecue smell, Coalbridge thought.
    But the nanobugs were repairing the damage as fast as it occurred, and probably insulating the inner body parts below the skin from further damage. The kids would suffer from the fire they were applying to their bodies, but in the end they weren’t going to be disfigured. Or burn to death. Or even be terribly inconvenienced.
    Which was good, Coalbridge reflected. You did dumb shit when you were a teenager. Unfortunately, the teenagers weren’t doing a very good job at copying the Tovil monks’ calm indifference to pain.
    “Aaaaaaaaiaaaaaaaaaah!” Their heads tilted back, agony in their throats, the teen screams continued—loud and annoyingly piercing.
    It’s like a goddamn coyote yowl, Coalbridge thought. Haven’t heard one of those in ages.
    As Coalbridge looked on, he saw one of the girls break from her position, try to crawl from the street toward the gutter, but another flaming boy reached for her.
    For a moment the two tussled on the pavement, both engulfed in flames.
    Coalbridge’s impulse to help kicked back in. He took a step toward the two. This was insane. If the girl wanted out, hadn’t realized the pain she was getting herself into, it was his duty to aid her.
    But before he could move any farther, the boy succeeded in throwing himself atop the flaming girl and holding her in place.
    Coalbridge quickly made his way toward the two—only to pull up short. Now he was close enough to see what was up.
    He’d misinterpreted. The two weren’t actually fighting or struggling at all. They were locked in a kiss.
    And were they . . .  
    Yep.
    Coalbridge turned away, amused and disgusted. He chuckled. If this really was the end of the world, what a third-rate apocalypse it had turned out to be.
    Another glance toward the sky.
    No drop-rod attack seemed imminent. But the longer he lingered outside, the more exposed he felt.
    Coalbridge made his way back to the side of the Elm Street cleared corridor. As he walked on, any contempt he’d felt dissipated. He felt suddenly tender toward the burned kids. He’d been an adrenaline junkie when he was that age. He’d strongly considered taking an aviation route when he graduated from Annapolis.
    And he’d jumped at the Extry, and spacecraft duty, the minute his transfer had been approved.
    Of course, aircraft were now obsolete militarily—at least so far as the war with the sceeve was concerned.
    Fate had led him out to sea on surface vessels and then driven him in another direction entirely—one in which there was plenty of