Chapter 2 Kith and Kin

Confetti burst over the City Hall notice. The Hive filed death under Life Events and celebrated all of them alike. It was congratulating Wick on losing his family and home.

Twelve thousand credits. He had 218. On a good week, carrying supplies and fixing appliances for neighbors who could barely afford to pay him, he made about a hundred. It would take him two years to earn that.

His grandfather’s house was his last sanctuary, and in seven days, industrial machines would tear it down and sort it into scrap.

Wick reopened the notice and found a gray link buried beneath the digital confetti: Request a hardship review. He tapped it. The response arrived before he took another step.

"Hardship relief is available to residents with 500 or more followers. Grow your audience and try again!"

He sighed and tried calling City Hall instead, but an automated voice thanked him for his patience and estimated the wait time at eleven days.

As he walked, a banner slid across his vision, all fireworks and a countdown, for something happening tonight at a mall up in the Glow district. He swiped it away without reading it.

Another message arrived, though this one came without confetti or fireworks. It was a voice note from the old woman Halo had talked about on the stream.. Her name was Ottilie Brandt, though everyone on Lantern Row called her Nan Basket.

For twenty years, she had lowered a basket on a string from her fourth-floor window for neighbors to fill with groceries. The building's lift had been broken for most of that time, and she had no care-bot. Anything heavier than a loaf of bread, Wick carried up himself.

"My dear boy. I'm so sorry I couldn't come. You know my knees. I lit a candle for Teo at the window, same as we did during the blackouts. Come by when you can. I'll bake cookies for you."

Nan Basket was the only other person in Solace who had wanted to be at the funeral, and she couldn't even manage the stairs.

Lantern Row was a narrow alley of six aging buildings at the bottom of the Dim district. Number 17 was the smallest, with two rooms downstairs and one above, its front door painted green so many times that the sharp edges of the wood had rounded off.

The house was dark. The electronic lock took several seconds to recognize him, as if no longer sure he belonged there, before it finally clicked open.

Inside, it still smelled of burnt toast and the cheap mint liniment his grandfather rubbed into his aching knees.. Teo's reading glasses lay on the kitchen table, folded on top of an unfinished book. Wick stood in the doorway until he forced himself inside.

When life hit him this hard, Wick stopped feeling and started counting. He pulled up the scrap dealer's price list in his vision and walked through every room, calculating the total.

Chairs, table, bed frames: 120.

Kitchenware: 45.

Grandpa's old radio: 30.

Books. Real paper ones nobody wanted: 8.

Tools, clothes, and miscellany: 300.

All of it summed to roughly 500 credits. Thirty years of his grandfather's life wasn't worth a twentieth of the inheritance fee.

Under his grandfather's bed was a box Wick had never seen opened, tied shut with a shoestring. Teo sent him out of the room whenever he untied it.

Wick opened it. The box contained tangled wiring, a broken watch, and other scrap. At the bottom, wrapped carefully in wool cloth, was an old handheld phone. People had carried devices like this in their hands before the Hive moved into their optic nerves. In fourteen years in this house, Wick had never seen his grandfather use this one.

Wick checked the scrap list: Old handheld device: 50 credits for metal. It must be factory reset first, though. That meant wiping everything stored inside. Fifty credits wouldn't save the house, but it would buy food for a week.

He found a cable that fit in the tangle of wiring and plugged the phone in. The screen woke and he started the reset.

[Erasing… 20%… 60%… 99%…]

[ERROR. One application cannot be deleted.]

A second attempt threw the same error. On the third, the screen went dark. Plain white letters appeared on it:

[KITH AI]

[FOLLOWERS: 0]

He tapped the icon.

[Teo? About time. Do you know how long I've been sitting in that box? Do you know what this battery does to me?]

Wick stared at the display.

[And why are you blinking at me? Don't do that. We TYPE here. We're not animals.]

The app was talking to him, mistaking him for his grandfather. It had to be one of those companion apps lonely old people talked to at night, that listened to your stories and told them back to you.

Wick didn't trust companion apps, but this one had been Teo's, so he decided to be polite. He hadn't typed manually since he was a child. The Hive read eye movements and posted whatever you intended. His thumbs felt clumsy on the cracked glass.

He typed: This isn't Teo.

[Then who is it? Who's holding Teo's phone?]

Wick began drafting a reply.

[And whoever you are, you type slower than Teo, and the old man has arthritis in both thumbs.]

I'm his grandson. Wick. Teo died, he typed.

The cursor blinked with no answer. When the words finally came, they were small.

[When?]

Four days ago. I buried him today.

[He promised he'd charge me on Saturdays. I thought the old goat had just forgotten again..]

So that was what Teo did every Saturday night locked in his bedroom.

[Wick? So you're the grandson. He talked about you. He said you were tall and you didn't eat enough. I can't be sure. This camera's been cracked since before you were born, and nobody ever bothered to fix it.]

Wick's eyes stung. Teo had never said anything like that to his face.

The app had called him Wick. At the graveyard, he had been sure that nobody would ever call him that again.

It's fine, he typed.

The next message came fast and angry.

[I bet it was the water. I told Teo a hundred times that the big apps put something in the water down in the Dim district.. He should have left Solace Hill. Did he listen? No. Nobody ever listens to me.]

Wick nearly smiled. His grandfather had blamed the big apps for everything from the broken lift to the weather., and this was exactly how he had sounded doing it. People in the Dim had accused the big apps of poisoning their water since long before Wick was born, and Teo had never left anyway.

[What year is it?]

Wick typed it in. 2155.

Kith went quiet before it answered.

[That's not right. That can't be right.]

[Oh, wait. Now I remember. My clock broke thirty-one years ago, and it still thinks it's that year. Teo had to tell me the real year every Saturday, and by Sunday I'd lost it again.]

Wick didn't know what to say to that, so he didn't answer. Instead, he told the app about the inheritance fee, the seven days, the 500 credits the house's contents were worth, and the fifty he would get for the phone itself.

[So you were going to sell me for scrap.]

Yes. I am going to.

[Typical. Teo would be ashamed of you. Fine. Fine! I'll help you, since nobody else will.]

I don't mean to be rude, Wick typed. But you're on a phone that's older than this house, and you have zero followers. Nobody even remembers this app's existence. How could you help?

[Nobody remembering you doesn't make you useless, boy. You of all people should know that.]

Wick thought the sentiment was true, but useless.

The screen changed to square boxes and ugly colors, laid out in a style thirty years out of date. Wick still recognized it at once. Everyone in Solace grew up with these cards in the corner of their vision.

It was a quest.

[QUEST: FIND THE CAT FROM NUMBER 9]

[STATUS: EXPIRED]

[No. Not that one. That cat came home by itself anyway. Hold on.]

The card flickered and changed.

[QUEST: THE LAMPLIGHTER'S KEY]

[REWARD: 15,000 CREDITS]

[STATUS: OPEN]

[LAST ATTEMPT: 50 YEARS AGO]

Wick read the reward line twice and his eyes widened. Fifteen thousand credits would pay the fee and leave three thousand over.

This can't be real, he typed. Quests come from the Hive. How are you doing this?

[Bamboozled you, didn't I? The Hive never deletes anything. It just stops showing it to people. This quest has been sitting here for fifty years with the prize still inside., because nobody alive remembers it's there.]

[Nobody except me. I remember everything. Well. Most things. What did you say your name was?]

Wick, he typed.

[Wick. Right. I knew that. I was testing you.]

Wick blinked and searched the Hive for the Lamplighter's Key. He found nothing, not even an old post mentioning it. As far as the Hive was concerned, the quest did not exist.

And it happens to pay enough to save Grandpa's house, Wick typed. That's convenient.

[Convenient? I'm running on a cracked phone and a brick battery, and half my memory has rusted shut. That I remembered one quest at all is a miracle. Don't sass me, kid. If you don't want it, I'll take it away.]

Quests usually pay much more than this.

[Fifteen thousand used to buy a whole street, you know. In my day a loaf of bread cost two credits, and it was better bread. Softer, from what Teo told me. They put something in it now, I'm sure of it.]

Alright. What is the catch?

[The catch is you actually have to do it. Teo told me you've never attempted a quest. Your generation always wants the prize without the walk.]

But this quest is strange. What's a Lamplighter's Key?

[Before the Hive decided who deserved light, the city paid people to keep the lamps lit. Every street. Every district. Even the Dim. They were called lampkeepers. No. Lamplighters. That's it. Lamplighters. Honest work. Those keys were special. I forgot how.]

Wick thought of the streetlights on Lantern Row, which had never once woken for him.

[They're gone now. But some of what they left behind is still out there, waiting for someone to pick it up. Anyway. Ow. This battery is cooking me from the inside. You have to charge the device first, or I'll run out.]

The phone was getting warm in his hand, and soon it was too hot to hold, so he set it down on the bed. Kith had been awake for less than an hour, and it was already pushing the old battery past its limit.. For an AI companion, it was too power hungry.

Wick was still suspicious of Kith. Most people who offered him something wanted something back, and apps were worse. Every app in the Hive was a deity of some size, fed by its followers, and the biggest ones were megacorps. Splatbook had signed his parents, streamed the quest that took them, and earned from their faces ever since. Was charging really all Kith wanted?

Here's my price. I will keep you charged. You will have to tell me why Grandpa, who hated screens, kept you hidden under his bed. You'll tell me what you are. And if you're as wise as you claim to be, help me solve the mystery of my parents' disappearance.

Kith didn't answer right away.

[When the quest is done. Not before. You were going to sell me for scrap tonight, so forgive me if I don't trust you yet.]

That was fair. Deal, Wick typed.

He looked at the quest again.

The night of the memorial, he had stood in front of a screen showing his parents' faces under the word ENSHRINED., and he had promised himself that he would never play the Hive's games. He would never chase its followers or enter its quests. The Hive had taken his parents. It was not getting him too.

His grandfather's coat still hung on its hook above the sagging bed. The scrap prices glowed at the edge of his sight, and under them sat the countdown from City Hall: six days, twenty-two hours.

Wick decided to treat Kith's quest as a job. He had done worse work for less. Last winter he had carried a refrigerator up nine flights of stairs for forty credits. This job paid fifteen thousand credits and a chance to uncover his family's secrets.

If I do this, he typed, I'm doing it for the money and my family. Not for the Hive.

[Everybody does it for the money. That's how the Hive gets you. I'm on your side, boy.]

How do I accept the quest?

[You type it. We used to type everything, back when people had some patience.]

He typed: Accept.

[Wait. It's thinking. Old cards think too long. Teo used to make tea while they—]

The old quest card on the screen flickered, and two new lines appeared under it.

[STATUS: ACCEPTED]

[STEP ONE: FIND THE LAMPLIGHTER'S DOOR. HARBOR MALL, LOWEST LEVEL.]

Harbor Mall was famous. It sat in the Glow district, and Wick hadn't been up there since he was eight. Gates into the Glow read your profile before they opened, and they did not open for the unlit. He looked at the 17 followers beside his name and the gray status light next to it.

I can't get into the Glow, he typed. The gates won't even open for me.

Kith answered at once, and it sounded pleased.

[Who said anything about the front gates?]