fic: eyai: Byproduct of an Insurrection
Title: Byproduct of an Insurrection
Author: girl_wonder
Summary: Art is the byproduct of transformation. We express what we cannot stop.
A/N: Thanks a billion to tassosss for being awesome and kicking ass. I owe you, hon.
This is written for schiarire for eyai yuletide! Hope you like it, hon! The other stories in this universe are linked here.
The birth of eyai is traced back to the development of nanotech in the early part of the century. A single square centimeter could process one quadrillion calculations per second.
Although nanotech was the true nascence for eyai, most people incorrectly attribute the birth of eyai to a small doll presented at the '50 World's Fair. The doll walked and talked and was able to perform tasks which proved it had what every psychology test would consider intelligence.
It was called AI. Artificial Intelligence. Its creator, Miles Lodell, named the doll Eve.
*****
"I'm bombing the tube tonight," Boon said.
"Don't," Tweeny said. She snapped on her flight goggles and mask, sprayed one layer over the stencil.
"Why not?" Boon scrawled his name again, permanent ink above her stencil.
"The coppers will have you in the dock faster than you can mark the first letter of your name." She snapped the paint closed and peeled off the stencil.
An apple, perfect and red, with a bite and the word: FIGHT.
"I can do it," Boon said.
"Fine." She slid the paint-wet stencil under her shirt to where she'd lined her body with plastic. "I don't really care. Don't you dare rat me."
"You take graff so seriously," Boon said. He stood back and looked at the apple. "You're so political. People don't get this, you know."
"I'm not going to explain this to you," she said. The paint fit neatly in her handbag and when she stood, she was any other school girl, neon pink petticoats peeking under her uniform skirt. Her blazer matched and she adjusted the goggles on her forehead before turning around.
"I'm not dumb! It's about the food riots, in't it? I'm right, ain't I?"
Tweeny ignored him, checking for coppers before walking down the street.
*****
"Boon got nicked," Sandra said. She put on another layer of lipstick and then extended out her feet. "Look at these boots. Neo-Victoriana. And the school can't cite me again. Half inch heel, covers the ankle."
"Where?" Tweeny asked. She reached for Sandra's oversized purse.
"Tagging his name in the tube." Sandra raised her eyebrows and reached over to flick at the flight goggles hanging around Tweeny's neck. "He acted alone, had no accomplices and didn't know the name of any other urban artists."
"You're a doll, Sandy." Tweeny dug for the tube of lipstick, put it on without a mirror.
"You'd know things if you ever paid attention to the forums," Sandra said. She reached over with a gloved finger and fixed the line of Tweeny's lipstick. "You wouldn't think of bombing somewhere as public as the tube."
"Do I look half crazy?" Tweeny puckered her lips.
"Varsha Patil, you look like you're late for class." Sandra kissed the air beside Tweeny's cheek before hopping off the bench.
*****
Eve was the mother of AI, which became eyai slowly, though upgrades.
When AI were used to break the union strikes, they were eons away from the little doll who could write her own poetry. But they lacked many of the basic .apps which define modern eyai. Facial and response .apps were introduced to negate the uncanny valley.
As time went on .apps became more complex and eyai were no longer mass produced. Of that first generation of Eve's children, only a few remain in museums.
*****
Creating art that said something was a lot harder than tagging. Part of the reason that she'd never get caught tagging the tube was that she'd never do something as insipid as tagging. Any idiot who'd gone to primary school could write their name; it took a real artist to make people think.
"I like it," Sandra said, pausing in front of Tweeny's newest graff. Art always looked different in the morning, but Tweeny was still pretty proud of it. "Razor pro-Union."
"Boon thought it was about the food riots," Tweeny said, sneering. She was a little glad he'd gotten nicked before he could tag somewhere that she was saving for the right graff.
"Well, Boon got nicked," Sandy said. "And he was always a bit of a poser."
Tweeny kicked at a piece of gravel and gestured with her elbow towards the bodega down the street. It was cloudy and gray, she tightened her school jacket and scarf.
"I'm gonna go see if they have any food," she said.
"You know they don't," Sandy said. "Ta."
"Be fierce," Tweeny saluted and turned back towards the store.
The owner looked at her suspiciously when she walked in.
"Oi, I paid you," she said, defensively.
He shrugged his meaty shoulders and gestured to the empty shelves. "No food."
"Then why're you even open? Waste of power is what it is." She picked at the canned food left, found nothing but asparagus.
"AI. Picking food," he said. With his chin he motioned towards the holo.
She immediately saw men working the field, and grinned. "They give into the worker's unions?"
"AI," he repeated. "Picking food."
With a frown, she glanced at the television again, and saw what she hadn't noticed before. Each man looked the same: carbon copies ten to a field, each moving methodically to strip the ripe vegetables from plants.
Occasionally, there'd be a real person between the AI.
"Scabs," Tweeny said. The synchronicity was disturbing, they all reached at the same time, all picked and boxed and then moved down the row.
"Food," the shopkeeper repeated.
*****
On her way back home, she spotted the fresh graff. It was a gorgeous design and an unfamiliar tag claiming it as Ops.
A man's head, halved, revealing clockwork underneath.
THINK was scrawled beneath it, a new font she might have to steal.
She booked before the checkers caught her loitering.
At home, she let herself in, keypad at the door stuttering colors, which meant they might have rolling brown outs soon. Mum wasn't home, neither was her Da. Neither was surprising.
Pinging Sandra, she put on a kettle for tea.
"Yeah?" Sandra answered. In the background was an odd mix of violin and drums. Someone was yelling loud.
"Someone bombed that empty building next to the shop. You know who it was?" Tweeny sketched what she could remember of the tag and sent it over.
"Yeah, they're talking about him on the forums. No one knows. He did the same stencil at the park bathroom." There was more noise in the background. "Have to go, see you at school."
The idea of a riff of the graff spun out in Tweeny's head, and she pulled out a sketchbook. It started basic, the clockwork man again, and then something maybe in really classic font. Shakespearean or something. She sketched it out.
If you cut them, do they bleed?
It was a riff, not quite a ditto of the original graff, and Tweeny took a marker to a blank stencil, careful to make the clockwork her own.
*****
Of course, under the threat of inexpensive, tireless labor, the unions crumbled. Despite the riots and civil unrest, most union-controlled jobs were entirely AI within a decade of Eve.
*****
She saw her first AI up close during the last month of school. It was a tall woman, brown hair, brown eyes. Gorgeous. Unbelievably gorgeous. Sandy was the most beautiful girl that Tweeny knew, and she didn't come close to this woman.
The AI taught maths, putting up the words on the board in neat, clear handwriting. It didn't blink, it didn't smile. It didn't even breathe.
"Man, I wouldn't fuck that cold bitch, even if you paid me to, shit."
"Eyai slag comin' in here like they can teach us all with machine, like we aren't worth a human teaching us." He slurred the letters together, AI becoming a single dipthong sound.
"Eyai," Tweeny echoed softly, trying it out on her tongue.
With her back to the fence, she closed her eyes and imagined having the balls to bomb the tube. She imaged what she'd graff there. Maybe a person with a clockwork face. Maybe a person with a clockwork face and the word FEAR.
On the other side of the fence, the boys continued to talk.
*****
She sprayed her own work next to the original. It looked sharp, fierce. It was like the first line in a conversation.
They original had faded some, but it still had its shape. A clockwork head, patterned red and black. The word THINK boldly scrawled under the art.
She'd adjusted. A mecha body, made up of gears and clockwork. Underneath, the bold words, IT THINKS. IT WORKS. DOES IT BLEED?
It took her five minutes to have the stencil up, the paint sprayed and stencil off. Even the checkers couldn't catch her when she was that fast. She slid the wet stencil away and tossed her hair, walking out of the park.
Homeland Defense said no one was invisible in London, but Tweeny knew that was a lie. She was invisible in London, with her school uniform and concealed spray cans. On the way home, she stopped at the shop and picked up apples and greens. The fruit tasted the same, no matter what had picked it.
*****
The first reference of eyai as "Automata Industria" was made by cultural philosopher David Corbett. Later, Corbett attributed the phrase to a series of street art installations during the Transition.
*****
On her way home, she detoured through the park to check her work. She liked the new paint she was working with, liked the lack of drips and smears. In red paint, someone had written:
AUTOMATED INDUSTRY
They'd tagged it with the pseudonym, "Ops." Tweeny glanced around and pulled out her paint, scrawling quickly:
AUTOMATA INDUSTRIA
She left hers unsigned.
*****
Sandra sat poised on the bench as she laced up her shoes. From her smile, she was well aware of the attention she was getting from the boys leaning against the fence.
"You're becoming a sensation," Sandy said. "Automata Industria. They love it. There's pictures of it in Japan."
Tweeny glared until the nearest boys backed off and then leaned back until her arm brushed Sandra's leg.
"Nah, they just like seeing a feud," Tweeny pulled out a cigarette and lit it. "It's not like I'm doing that much new."
"But it's not a feud, is it?" Sandra plucked the cigarette from Tweeny's fingers and ground it out with her heel. "You're both riffing off each other. I love it. Eyai is fabulous for the scene."
"Yeah, say that when they have eyai waitresses," Tweeny said. "Say that when you're out of work like my Da."
She pulled out a new cigarette, lit it efficiently. The fingerless gloves that Sandy had bought her had the benefit of hiding any stray paint or ink on her palms. It was strange to be on the cutting edge of fashion, to watch the school follow in Sandra's wake instead of being on the outside looking in, a step behind the transition to petticoats and pocket watches.
"What would you do if you met him? Ops?" Sandra asked. She slid her fingers along Tweeny's and Tweeny released the fag.
"Probably make something beautiful."
Tweeny hadn't thought about it much. She'd been too busy planning the next step, going one higher, one bigger. The cycle of it called to her, she wanted more. They were escalating and Tweeny didn't care at all.
It wasn't quite collaborative, the building, it was more evolutionary. Darwin by spray paint. They were heading to the highest organism, the biggest bomb site. They were heading towards the tube.
*****
Of course, no one is able to determine how much Kelisha Jones's campaign was helped by the grassroots work of many of the city's street artists. But their work, combined with the networking within the unions, is often used to explain the extraordinarily high turn out for that year's election.
*****
Inevitably, Tweeny got caught up, too. Kelisha Jones, a nurse from a council flat, was running for office, and a few other street artists had already picked it up. Scowlz had coined the term Jobs Jones, putting Jones's face on an old war poster and wheatpasting it all over the city.
No one wanted to be on the outside of this one, it was too big to be left out. Finally, someone rolling down the tube was out there fighting for their jobs.
"You could do something," Sandra said. "I bet it'd blaze."
"Don't have any ideas. No new ones." Tweeny kicked at the bench, her eyes on the checkers near their car. Coppers were never good to see around the park. Usually they were just pissing about, like anyone else in the park, but sometimes they were looking for someone.
"You'll find something," Sandra said confidently.
Annoyed, Tweeny snapped, "I've been trying. No new ideas."
Ops had sprayed on a series of stylized headshots, different words written underneath each. THINK. JOBS. FIGHT.
It felt like he was uncertain, too. There was something about Jones, though, that made her want to help. Someone out there who wanted to do something for all of them.
Sandra turned on the wireless, refusing to look at Tweeny. The checkers moved on, didn't even glance at Tweeny and Sandra as they passed. Their stride was lazy.
"Why punish the hand for the action, when it is the brain who commanded it?" Kelisha Jones asked, her voice firm. "We cannot go to war with AI, they are machines. We can fight the greed, the industry that demands AI. It is not AI taking our jobs, is it our jobs being given to AI. I am running for Parliament not so that I can get a job, but so that I can fight to make sure we all have jobs."
Tweeny turned on her heel. "I'll think," she said over her shoulder.
"Be fierce," Sandy said. "You'll blaze when you're ready."
*****
She sketched it until she had it down and then made a stencil for the picture of Jones herself. It was stylized, but not the appealing stylized look of Ops's work. Tweeny's was a fierce woman. A fighter. A woman who'd run the nurse's union until hospitals replaced all the nurses with AI.
Finally, she picked a date. A year since Boon got nicked, because it fit and because it said something, even if she and Sandy were the only ones who remembered the date. That night, she walked towards the tube. It wouldn't be closed until 3 am, last train at 2:30. She tried to look casual and calm.
Paying her fare, she walked down to the platform and then all the way down to the end, jumped down off the platform into the shadows of the tunnel. Her breathing was overly loud in the silence.
The last train sped by her, so close she could reach out and touch it if she wanted to lose a hand. A few people got off, a couple got on, she could see their formal shoes, the lace of a petticoat and then the train was gone. The platform cleared.
"Anyone left?" the filter agent yelled.
She didn't move, held her breath until she saw yellow spots.
He turned off the lights one by one, but she was used to working in the dark.
Her hands shook, and she triple checked the stencil was straight and then sprayed it. The words she'd have to freehand, but she'd practiced it enough that they came automatically.
When the first train came into the station, she woke curled under a bench at the far edge of the platform. Blindly, she got on the train. If she walked out of the station without ever having ridden, it'd be too obvious.
The first look at her work was through the tube windows.
Kelisha Jones looked fierce.
The two lines of text were neater than she would have given herself credit for, working in the dark.
AUTOMATA INDUSTRIA
HOMO SAPIENS RESISTENS
*****
Many of the catchphrases coined during the Transition have gone out of style, but a few remain in use today. "Fierce" and "sharp" are still in use. "Down the tube" originally meaning a destination, has come to mean to deteriorate, to get bad quickly.
*****
"Ops made a post," Sandra said. She was serious, her coat buttoned all the way to her neck. "He's going to do something."
Tweeny shrugged with one shoulder, drawing out the rest of the graff she saw in her head. It wouldn't top the tube bomb, but nothing would, not for a while.
"He's always doing things," Tweeny said. "What's the big deal?"
"You don't get it. He was pissed you got the tube. He was really pissed. For him it was a feud, it turns out."
Sandra sat down next to her, looking over her shoulder at the sketch-pad. The clock tower toned the hour, deep sounds that echoed.
"That's tops, hon," Sandy said. "Definitely blaze. You wearing that waistcoat I got you?"
Softly, Tweeny laughed. "I thought you were worried about what Ops might do to me."
"Yeah, but if he kills you, I'll get all those petticoats I gave you back."
Leaning forward, Sandra framed Tweeny's face with her gloved hands. Her hair was pinned in a style that narrowed her face, made her eyes appear huge.
"Be careful. You'll be careful?" She turned Tweeny's face in her hands. "And you'll start using that rouge I bought you?"
"Yes and no," Tweeny put her hands over Sandra's. "That rogue makes me look like a doll."
"That's the point," Sandra said, releasing Tweeny. "You be careful, Varsha Patil, or I'll really be mad."
"Homo... Sapience," Tweeny said. "I'll be careful."
*****
The street was like any other tube-side street. Shops. A barber. And old woman on the corner, hand out for coins.
"This is where he said it was? I don't see any of his work." Tweeny asked, glancing around. The graff was old, mostly just tags. One of her old pieces, the apple and the word FIGHT. It was so crude that it was embarrassing.
"We should be avoiding him. I don't like this," Sandy said, her words short. She might not like it, but she was dressed tops: a neon green petticoat peaking out from under her vintage dress, a brown corset that matched her hat.
"Maybe I should cover that old one with something new," Tweeny said. "It's not really where I am now.
Sandra turned to look at it, "Don't be so hard on yourself-"
A woman screamed. In the middle of the road, a man slapped her hard across the face so that she fell to her knees, hand to her cheek.
She was a brunette, her hair pulled up in a modern up-do. Some of it had come loose in the struggle, and it covered part of her face. The man was blonde, his suit posh and pipe, he had that look of a sports star, but Tweeny couldn't place him.
"Whore," he yelled. The street was still. He grabbed her hair and drew her head back for another slap.
A few shop keepers came to their doors, but no one moved to help.
"We should do something," Tweeny said, but she was uncertain. Sometimes at night, you could hear people in the apartment next door, the urban soundtrack of abuse. It wasn't really her problem.
The man walked to his car, and Sandra relaxed against her arm, then tensed. The man drew out a cricket bat, twisted his hand around the paddle. He drew his arm back, smashed it into her head. The girl collapsed onto the ground, her body twitching.
Across the street, two kids had the mobiles out, videoing it. No one spoke.
Threading her fingers with Sandra's, Tweeny said, "We should... we should go."
The man pulled his arm back and the checkers arrived. Tweeny had never been so glad to see a copper since she was a kid. They had him handcuffed before the second car even arrived.
"Wait," the man yelled. "Wait!"
One of the coppers knelt on the ground, feeling at the girl's wrist. He yelled out, "She's dead."
Sandy's fingers tightened on hers convulsively.
The girl sat up, brushing her bloodied hair out of her face. She stood and calmly walked over to the police. The one on the ground sat, his mouth open.
"There has been a miscommunication. My designation is L-78542. I am eyai," her voice was clear and it carried.
Now that she was standing, Tweeny recognized her. She was the same model she'd seen in maths for the last month of school.
Bile burned her throat, and she knew who he was. "Ops," she whispered. The kids were still filming. "It'll go viral."
Sandy squeezed her hand tightly.
"It's performance art! You can't arrest me for that!" The man laughed, and then his eyes caught on Tweeny. He winked, and Tweeny shivered. This topped the tube, if he'd bombed the pipe, it couldn't have been bigger than this.
A pair of DCIs approached, glancing at both the man and the AI.
"Listen, I don't care if it was tea for the Queen, we're taking you in," the older DCI grabbed Ops's shoulder and shoved him down into the car. His partner had hands on the compliant eyai. "Both of you."
The checkers cleared the street faster than Tweeny thought they could. Tugging at her hand, Sandy led her away before the coppers could ask for a statement.
*****
When the counter-revolution came, one of the more popular phrases originated in this Transition period. Homo Sapiens Resistens, originally coined by urban artists to support MP Jones's political campaign, came to symbolize the human response to the eyai idiom Automata Insurrecta.
Of course, because of the nature of urban art, the transience of both product and artist, the phrase is attributed to no specific artist.
*****
end
Author: girl_wonder
Summary: Art is the byproduct of transformation. We express what we cannot stop.
A/N: Thanks a billion to tassosss for being awesome and kicking ass. I owe you, hon.
This is written for schiarire for eyai yuletide! Hope you like it, hon! The other stories in this universe are linked here.
The birth of eyai is traced back to the development of nanotech in the early part of the century. A single square centimeter could process one quadrillion calculations per second.
Although nanotech was the true nascence for eyai, most people incorrectly attribute the birth of eyai to a small doll presented at the '50 World's Fair. The doll walked and talked and was able to perform tasks which proved it had what every psychology test would consider intelligence.
It was called AI. Artificial Intelligence. Its creator, Miles Lodell, named the doll Eve.
*****
"I'm bombing the tube tonight," Boon said.
"Don't," Tweeny said. She snapped on her flight goggles and mask, sprayed one layer over the stencil.
"Why not?" Boon scrawled his name again, permanent ink above her stencil.
"The coppers will have you in the dock faster than you can mark the first letter of your name." She snapped the paint closed and peeled off the stencil.
An apple, perfect and red, with a bite and the word: FIGHT.
"I can do it," Boon said.
"Fine." She slid the paint-wet stencil under her shirt to where she'd lined her body with plastic. "I don't really care. Don't you dare rat me."
"You take graff so seriously," Boon said. He stood back and looked at the apple. "You're so political. People don't get this, you know."
"I'm not going to explain this to you," she said. The paint fit neatly in her handbag and when she stood, she was any other school girl, neon pink petticoats peeking under her uniform skirt. Her blazer matched and she adjusted the goggles on her forehead before turning around.
"I'm not dumb! It's about the food riots, in't it? I'm right, ain't I?"
Tweeny ignored him, checking for coppers before walking down the street.
*****
"Boon got nicked," Sandra said. She put on another layer of lipstick and then extended out her feet. "Look at these boots. Neo-Victoriana. And the school can't cite me again. Half inch heel, covers the ankle."
"Where?" Tweeny asked. She reached for Sandra's oversized purse.
"Tagging his name in the tube." Sandra raised her eyebrows and reached over to flick at the flight goggles hanging around Tweeny's neck. "He acted alone, had no accomplices and didn't know the name of any other urban artists."
"You're a doll, Sandy." Tweeny dug for the tube of lipstick, put it on without a mirror.
"You'd know things if you ever paid attention to the forums," Sandra said. She reached over with a gloved finger and fixed the line of Tweeny's lipstick. "You wouldn't think of bombing somewhere as public as the tube."
"Do I look half crazy?" Tweeny puckered her lips.
"Varsha Patil, you look like you're late for class." Sandra kissed the air beside Tweeny's cheek before hopping off the bench.
*****
Eve was the mother of AI, which became eyai slowly, though upgrades.
When AI were used to break the union strikes, they were eons away from the little doll who could write her own poetry. But they lacked many of the basic .apps which define modern eyai. Facial and response .apps were introduced to negate the uncanny valley.
As time went on .apps became more complex and eyai were no longer mass produced. Of that first generation of Eve's children, only a few remain in museums.
*****
Creating art that said something was a lot harder than tagging. Part of the reason that she'd never get caught tagging the tube was that she'd never do something as insipid as tagging. Any idiot who'd gone to primary school could write their name; it took a real artist to make people think.
"I like it," Sandra said, pausing in front of Tweeny's newest graff. Art always looked different in the morning, but Tweeny was still pretty proud of it. "Razor pro-Union."
"Boon thought it was about the food riots," Tweeny said, sneering. She was a little glad he'd gotten nicked before he could tag somewhere that she was saving for the right graff.
"Well, Boon got nicked," Sandy said. "And he was always a bit of a poser."
Tweeny kicked at a piece of gravel and gestured with her elbow towards the bodega down the street. It was cloudy and gray, she tightened her school jacket and scarf.
"I'm gonna go see if they have any food," she said.
"You know they don't," Sandy said. "Ta."
"Be fierce," Tweeny saluted and turned back towards the store.
The owner looked at her suspiciously when she walked in.
"Oi, I paid you," she said, defensively.
He shrugged his meaty shoulders and gestured to the empty shelves. "No food."
"Then why're you even open? Waste of power is what it is." She picked at the canned food left, found nothing but asparagus.
"AI. Picking food," he said. With his chin he motioned towards the holo.
She immediately saw men working the field, and grinned. "They give into the worker's unions?"
"AI," he repeated. "Picking food."
With a frown, she glanced at the television again, and saw what she hadn't noticed before. Each man looked the same: carbon copies ten to a field, each moving methodically to strip the ripe vegetables from plants.
Occasionally, there'd be a real person between the AI.
"Scabs," Tweeny said. The synchronicity was disturbing, they all reached at the same time, all picked and boxed and then moved down the row.
"Food," the shopkeeper repeated.
*****
On her way back home, she spotted the fresh graff. It was a gorgeous design and an unfamiliar tag claiming it as Ops.
A man's head, halved, revealing clockwork underneath.
THINK was scrawled beneath it, a new font she might have to steal.
She booked before the checkers caught her loitering.
At home, she let herself in, keypad at the door stuttering colors, which meant they might have rolling brown outs soon. Mum wasn't home, neither was her Da. Neither was surprising.
Pinging Sandra, she put on a kettle for tea.
"Yeah?" Sandra answered. In the background was an odd mix of violin and drums. Someone was yelling loud.
"Someone bombed that empty building next to the shop. You know who it was?" Tweeny sketched what she could remember of the tag and sent it over.
"Yeah, they're talking about him on the forums. No one knows. He did the same stencil at the park bathroom." There was more noise in the background. "Have to go, see you at school."
The idea of a riff of the graff spun out in Tweeny's head, and she pulled out a sketchbook. It started basic, the clockwork man again, and then something maybe in really classic font. Shakespearean or something. She sketched it out.
If you cut them, do they bleed?
It was a riff, not quite a ditto of the original graff, and Tweeny took a marker to a blank stencil, careful to make the clockwork her own.
*****
Of course, under the threat of inexpensive, tireless labor, the unions crumbled. Despite the riots and civil unrest, most union-controlled jobs were entirely AI within a decade of Eve.
*****
She saw her first AI up close during the last month of school. It was a tall woman, brown hair, brown eyes. Gorgeous. Unbelievably gorgeous. Sandy was the most beautiful girl that Tweeny knew, and she didn't come close to this woman.
The AI taught maths, putting up the words on the board in neat, clear handwriting. It didn't blink, it didn't smile. It didn't even breathe.
"Man, I wouldn't fuck that cold bitch, even if you paid me to, shit."
"Eyai slag comin' in here like they can teach us all with machine, like we aren't worth a human teaching us." He slurred the letters together, AI becoming a single dipthong sound.
"Eyai," Tweeny echoed softly, trying it out on her tongue.
With her back to the fence, she closed her eyes and imagined having the balls to bomb the tube. She imaged what she'd graff there. Maybe a person with a clockwork face. Maybe a person with a clockwork face and the word FEAR.
On the other side of the fence, the boys continued to talk.
*****
She sprayed her own work next to the original. It looked sharp, fierce. It was like the first line in a conversation.
They original had faded some, but it still had its shape. A clockwork head, patterned red and black. The word THINK boldly scrawled under the art.
She'd adjusted. A mecha body, made up of gears and clockwork. Underneath, the bold words, IT THINKS. IT WORKS. DOES IT BLEED?
It took her five minutes to have the stencil up, the paint sprayed and stencil off. Even the checkers couldn't catch her when she was that fast. She slid the wet stencil away and tossed her hair, walking out of the park.
Homeland Defense said no one was invisible in London, but Tweeny knew that was a lie. She was invisible in London, with her school uniform and concealed spray cans. On the way home, she stopped at the shop and picked up apples and greens. The fruit tasted the same, no matter what had picked it.
*****
The first reference of eyai as "Automata Industria" was made by cultural philosopher David Corbett. Later, Corbett attributed the phrase to a series of street art installations during the Transition.
*****
On her way home, she detoured through the park to check her work. She liked the new paint she was working with, liked the lack of drips and smears. In red paint, someone had written:
AUTOMATED INDUSTRY
They'd tagged it with the pseudonym, "Ops." Tweeny glanced around and pulled out her paint, scrawling quickly:
AUTOMATA INDUSTRIA
She left hers unsigned.
*****
Sandra sat poised on the bench as she laced up her shoes. From her smile, she was well aware of the attention she was getting from the boys leaning against the fence.
"You're becoming a sensation," Sandy said. "Automata Industria. They love it. There's pictures of it in Japan."
Tweeny glared until the nearest boys backed off and then leaned back until her arm brushed Sandra's leg.
"Nah, they just like seeing a feud," Tweeny pulled out a cigarette and lit it. "It's not like I'm doing that much new."
"But it's not a feud, is it?" Sandra plucked the cigarette from Tweeny's fingers and ground it out with her heel. "You're both riffing off each other. I love it. Eyai is fabulous for the scene."
"Yeah, say that when they have eyai waitresses," Tweeny said. "Say that when you're out of work like my Da."
She pulled out a new cigarette, lit it efficiently. The fingerless gloves that Sandy had bought her had the benefit of hiding any stray paint or ink on her palms. It was strange to be on the cutting edge of fashion, to watch the school follow in Sandra's wake instead of being on the outside looking in, a step behind the transition to petticoats and pocket watches.
"What would you do if you met him? Ops?" Sandra asked. She slid her fingers along Tweeny's and Tweeny released the fag.
"Probably make something beautiful."
Tweeny hadn't thought about it much. She'd been too busy planning the next step, going one higher, one bigger. The cycle of it called to her, she wanted more. They were escalating and Tweeny didn't care at all.
It wasn't quite collaborative, the building, it was more evolutionary. Darwin by spray paint. They were heading to the highest organism, the biggest bomb site. They were heading towards the tube.
*****
Of course, no one is able to determine how much Kelisha Jones's campaign was helped by the grassroots work of many of the city's street artists. But their work, combined with the networking within the unions, is often used to explain the extraordinarily high turn out for that year's election.
*****
Inevitably, Tweeny got caught up, too. Kelisha Jones, a nurse from a council flat, was running for office, and a few other street artists had already picked it up. Scowlz had coined the term Jobs Jones, putting Jones's face on an old war poster and wheatpasting it all over the city.
No one wanted to be on the outside of this one, it was too big to be left out. Finally, someone rolling down the tube was out there fighting for their jobs.
"You could do something," Sandra said. "I bet it'd blaze."
"Don't have any ideas. No new ones." Tweeny kicked at the bench, her eyes on the checkers near their car. Coppers were never good to see around the park. Usually they were just pissing about, like anyone else in the park, but sometimes they were looking for someone.
"You'll find something," Sandra said confidently.
Annoyed, Tweeny snapped, "I've been trying. No new ideas."
Ops had sprayed on a series of stylized headshots, different words written underneath each. THINK. JOBS. FIGHT.
It felt like he was uncertain, too. There was something about Jones, though, that made her want to help. Someone out there who wanted to do something for all of them.
Sandra turned on the wireless, refusing to look at Tweeny. The checkers moved on, didn't even glance at Tweeny and Sandra as they passed. Their stride was lazy.
"Why punish the hand for the action, when it is the brain who commanded it?" Kelisha Jones asked, her voice firm. "We cannot go to war with AI, they are machines. We can fight the greed, the industry that demands AI. It is not AI taking our jobs, is it our jobs being given to AI. I am running for Parliament not so that I can get a job, but so that I can fight to make sure we all have jobs."
Tweeny turned on her heel. "I'll think," she said over her shoulder.
"Be fierce," Sandy said. "You'll blaze when you're ready."
*****
She sketched it until she had it down and then made a stencil for the picture of Jones herself. It was stylized, but not the appealing stylized look of Ops's work. Tweeny's was a fierce woman. A fighter. A woman who'd run the nurse's union until hospitals replaced all the nurses with AI.
Finally, she picked a date. A year since Boon got nicked, because it fit and because it said something, even if she and Sandy were the only ones who remembered the date. That night, she walked towards the tube. It wouldn't be closed until 3 am, last train at 2:30. She tried to look casual and calm.
Paying her fare, she walked down to the platform and then all the way down to the end, jumped down off the platform into the shadows of the tunnel. Her breathing was overly loud in the silence.
The last train sped by her, so close she could reach out and touch it if she wanted to lose a hand. A few people got off, a couple got on, she could see their formal shoes, the lace of a petticoat and then the train was gone. The platform cleared.
"Anyone left?" the filter agent yelled.
She didn't move, held her breath until she saw yellow spots.
He turned off the lights one by one, but she was used to working in the dark.
Her hands shook, and she triple checked the stencil was straight and then sprayed it. The words she'd have to freehand, but she'd practiced it enough that they came automatically.
When the first train came into the station, she woke curled under a bench at the far edge of the platform. Blindly, she got on the train. If she walked out of the station without ever having ridden, it'd be too obvious.
The first look at her work was through the tube windows.
Kelisha Jones looked fierce.
The two lines of text were neater than she would have given herself credit for, working in the dark.
AUTOMATA INDUSTRIA
HOMO SAPIENS RESISTENS
*****
Many of the catchphrases coined during the Transition have gone out of style, but a few remain in use today. "Fierce" and "sharp" are still in use. "Down the tube" originally meaning a destination, has come to mean to deteriorate, to get bad quickly.
*****
"Ops made a post," Sandra said. She was serious, her coat buttoned all the way to her neck. "He's going to do something."
Tweeny shrugged with one shoulder, drawing out the rest of the graff she saw in her head. It wouldn't top the tube bomb, but nothing would, not for a while.
"He's always doing things," Tweeny said. "What's the big deal?"
"You don't get it. He was pissed you got the tube. He was really pissed. For him it was a feud, it turns out."
Sandra sat down next to her, looking over her shoulder at the sketch-pad. The clock tower toned the hour, deep sounds that echoed.
"That's tops, hon," Sandy said. "Definitely blaze. You wearing that waistcoat I got you?"
Softly, Tweeny laughed. "I thought you were worried about what Ops might do to me."
"Yeah, but if he kills you, I'll get all those petticoats I gave you back."
Leaning forward, Sandra framed Tweeny's face with her gloved hands. Her hair was pinned in a style that narrowed her face, made her eyes appear huge.
"Be careful. You'll be careful?" She turned Tweeny's face in her hands. "And you'll start using that rouge I bought you?"
"Yes and no," Tweeny put her hands over Sandra's. "That rogue makes me look like a doll."
"That's the point," Sandra said, releasing Tweeny. "You be careful, Varsha Patil, or I'll really be mad."
"Homo... Sapience," Tweeny said. "I'll be careful."
*****
The street was like any other tube-side street. Shops. A barber. And old woman on the corner, hand out for coins.
"This is where he said it was? I don't see any of his work." Tweeny asked, glancing around. The graff was old, mostly just tags. One of her old pieces, the apple and the word FIGHT. It was so crude that it was embarrassing.
"We should be avoiding him. I don't like this," Sandy said, her words short. She might not like it, but she was dressed tops: a neon green petticoat peaking out from under her vintage dress, a brown corset that matched her hat.
"Maybe I should cover that old one with something new," Tweeny said. "It's not really where I am now.
Sandra turned to look at it, "Don't be so hard on yourself-"
A woman screamed. In the middle of the road, a man slapped her hard across the face so that she fell to her knees, hand to her cheek.
She was a brunette, her hair pulled up in a modern up-do. Some of it had come loose in the struggle, and it covered part of her face. The man was blonde, his suit posh and pipe, he had that look of a sports star, but Tweeny couldn't place him.
"Whore," he yelled. The street was still. He grabbed her hair and drew her head back for another slap.
A few shop keepers came to their doors, but no one moved to help.
"We should do something," Tweeny said, but she was uncertain. Sometimes at night, you could hear people in the apartment next door, the urban soundtrack of abuse. It wasn't really her problem.
The man walked to his car, and Sandra relaxed against her arm, then tensed. The man drew out a cricket bat, twisted his hand around the paddle. He drew his arm back, smashed it into her head. The girl collapsed onto the ground, her body twitching.
Across the street, two kids had the mobiles out, videoing it. No one spoke.
Threading her fingers with Sandra's, Tweeny said, "We should... we should go."
The man pulled his arm back and the checkers arrived. Tweeny had never been so glad to see a copper since she was a kid. They had him handcuffed before the second car even arrived.
"Wait," the man yelled. "Wait!"
One of the coppers knelt on the ground, feeling at the girl's wrist. He yelled out, "She's dead."
Sandy's fingers tightened on hers convulsively.
The girl sat up, brushing her bloodied hair out of her face. She stood and calmly walked over to the police. The one on the ground sat, his mouth open.
"There has been a miscommunication. My designation is L-78542. I am eyai," her voice was clear and it carried.
Now that she was standing, Tweeny recognized her. She was the same model she'd seen in maths for the last month of school.
Bile burned her throat, and she knew who he was. "Ops," she whispered. The kids were still filming. "It'll go viral."
Sandy squeezed her hand tightly.
"It's performance art! You can't arrest me for that!" The man laughed, and then his eyes caught on Tweeny. He winked, and Tweeny shivered. This topped the tube, if he'd bombed the pipe, it couldn't have been bigger than this.
A pair of DCIs approached, glancing at both the man and the AI.
"Listen, I don't care if it was tea for the Queen, we're taking you in," the older DCI grabbed Ops's shoulder and shoved him down into the car. His partner had hands on the compliant eyai. "Both of you."
The checkers cleared the street faster than Tweeny thought they could. Tugging at her hand, Sandy led her away before the coppers could ask for a statement.
*****
When the counter-revolution came, one of the more popular phrases originated in this Transition period. Homo Sapiens Resistens, originally coined by urban artists to support MP Jones's political campaign, came to symbolize the human response to the eyai idiom Automata Insurrecta.
Of course, because of the nature of urban art, the transience of both product and artist, the phrase is attributed to no specific artist.
*****
end