lagilman | For Your Amusement:

At the Hugos Last, a Certain Troublemaker decided that I and Writer X were Worse Troublemakers, and so to keep us busy (and not cause Trouble) before the awards started, he set us to write a short story, using a certain person we had been observing as the starting point. Said stories to be written on the backs of our programs, with whatever writing implements we had to-hand. Old Skool. No revisions, no rewrites, just pure down-on-page.

Writer X and I have vaaaastly different styles, so our stories came out vaaaaastly different. But we typed 'em up and sent them to each other, after the fact, for a larf. And here's mine.

Guardian at the Door

I wasn’t sure he could crack a smile – and if he could. I didn’t want to see it.

“We’re screwed.”

“Shush. I’m thinking.”

The guard was half again as tall and twice as wide as the guy who’d been there when we scouted the auditorium before things started.

“Let’s not do this.”

“Shut up.” I was tempted to shut the implant off and go in alone, but the lure of blessed silence wasn’t enough to offset the knowledge of how stupid that would be. I sat back on my heels, letting the crowd go past me, and watched. Big, but not dumb. The round, extra-special dark sunglasses reflected the overhead lights, not giving away a single tell. No hair to fuss with, his dark head gleaming the way only a freshly-waxed scalp could. There wasn’t a twitch of those thin, close-pressed lips, not a tick in his flat cheek; with the uniform of black shirt and pants cut for easy movement, he might as well be a ‘tron except there’s no way they had the budget to hire ‘trons. Although he might have been private hire…..some of the presenters got skittish, this time of year.

“Human,” my little friend said. “Pro.”

“I know. Shut up.”

He turned to track the approach of a civilian, and we could see the small black bug in his ear, a thin line running from the lobe to his square jaw, terminating in a micro-mic.

“Oooo. Nice tech.”

I didn’t even bother telling it to shut up this time. AIs and tech were like teenaged boys and porn – they can’t help themselves. But the mic tech was a major headache – it was locked into his cortex, could cut through any distortion, any interference, and check the master list easily. No way to con my way past.

“I told you were should have left the bar earlier,” the voice fretted, sounding more like my mother than it had any right to. “We’re never going to get a seat for the Hugos, now.”
---------------