Little Brother

I am today. I wandered in for the first time around the age of10 and asked for some recommendations. Tanya Huff (yes, the TanyaHuff, but she wasn't a fa

he nest was on the leaf and the leaf was on the twig and the twigwas on the branch and the branch was on the limb and the limb was in the treeand the tree was in the bog — the bog down in the valley-oh! High-ho the rat-tlin' bog, the bog down in the valley-oh —"You can return to class now," he said. "I'll call on you once the policeare ready to speak to you.""Are you going to call them now?""The procedure for calling in the police is complicated. I'd hoped thatwe could settle this fairly and quickly, but since you insist —""I can wait while you call them is all," I said. "I don't mind."He tapped his ring again and I braced for the blast."Go!" he yelled. "Get the hell out of my office, you miserable little —"20I got out, keeping my expression neutral. He wasn't going to call thecops. If he'd had enough evidence to go to the police with, he wouldhave called them in the first place. He hated my guts. I figured he'dheard some unverified gossip and hoped to spook me into confirming it.I moved down the corridor lightly and sprightly, keeping my gait evenand measured for the gait-recognition cameras. These had been installedonly a year before, and I loved them for their sheer idiocy. Beforehand,we'd had face-recognition cameras covering nearly every public space inschool, but a court ruled that was unconstitutional. So Benson and a lotof other paranoid school administrators had spent our textbook dollarson these idiot cameras that were supposed to be able to tell one person'swalk from another. Yeah, right.I got back to class and sat down again, Ms Galvez warmly welcomingme back. I unpacked the school's standard-issue machine and got backinto classroom mode. The SchoolBooks were the snitchiest technology ofthem all, logging every keystroke, watching all the network traffic forsuspicious keywords, counting every click, keeping track of every fleet-ing thought you put out over the net. We'd gotten them in my junioryear, and it only took a couple months for the shininess to wear off. Oncepeople figured out that these "free" laptops worked for the man — andshowed a never-ending parade of obnoxious ads to boot — they sud-denly started to feel very heavy and burdensome.Cracking my SchoolBook had been easy. The crack was online within amonth of the machine showing up, and there was nothing to it — justdownload a DVD image, burn it, stick it in the SchoolBook, and boot itwhile holding down a bunch of different keys at the same time. TheDVD did the rest, installing a whole bunch of hidden programs on themachine, programs that would stay hidden even when the Board of Eddid its daily remote integrity checks of the machines. Every now andagain I had to get an updat for the software to get around the Board'slatest tests, but it was a small price to pay to get a little control over thebox.I fired up IMParanoid, the secret instant messenger that I used when Iwanted to have an off-the-record discussion right in the middle of class.Darryl was already logged in.>The game's afoot! Something big is going down with Harajuku FunMadness, dude. You in?>21No. Freaking. Way. If I get caught ditching a third time, I'm expelled.Man, you know that. We'll go after school.>You've got lunch and then study-hall, right? That's two hours. Plentyof time to run down this clue and get back before anyone misses us. I'llget the whole team out.Harajuku Fun Madness is the best game ever made. I know I alreadysaid that, but it bears repeating. It's an ARG, an Alternate Reality Game,and the story goes that a gang of Japanese fashion-teens discovered a mi-raculous healing gem at the temple in Harajuku, which is basicallywhere cool Japanese teenagers invented every major subculture for thepast ten years. They're being hunted by evil monks, the Yakuza (AKAthe Japanese mafia), aliens, tax-inspectors, parents, and a rogue artificialintelligence. They slip the players coded messages that we have to de-code and use to track down clues that lead to more coded messages andmore clues.Imagine the best afternoon you've ever spent prowling the streets of acity, checking out all the weird people, funny hand-bills, street-maniacs,and funky shops. Now add a scavenger hunt to that, one that requiresyou to research crazy old films and songs and teen culture from aroundthe world and across time and space. And it's a competition, with thewinning team of four taking a grand prize of ten days in Tokyo, chillingon Harajuku bridge, geeking out in Akihabara, and taking home all theAstro Boy merchandise you can eat. Except that he's called "Atom Boy"in Japan.That's Harajuku Fun Madness, and once you've solved a puzzle ortwo, you'll never look back.>No man, just no. NO. Don't even ask.>I need you D. You're the best I've got. I swear I'll get us in and outwithout anyone knowing it. You know I can do that, right?>I know you can do it>So you're in?>22Hell no>Come on, Darryl. You're not going to your deathbed wishing you'dspent more study periods sitting in school>I'm not going to go to my deathbed wishing I'd spent more time play-ing ARGs either>Yeah but don't you think you might go to your death-bed wishingyou'd spent more time with Vanessa Pak?Van was part of my team. She went to a private girl's school in the EastBay, but I knew she'd ditch to come out and run the mission with me.Darryl has had a crush on her literally for years — even before pubertyendowed her with many lavish gifts. Darryl had fallen in love with hermind. Sad, really.>You suck>You're coming?He looked at me and shook his head. Then he nodded. I winked at himand set to work getting in touch with the rest of my team.I wasn't always into ARGing. I have a dark secret: I used to be aLARPer. LARPing is Live Action Role Playing, and it's just about what itsounds like: running around in costume, talking in a funny accent, pre-tending to be a super-spy or a vampire or a medieval knight. It's likeCapture the Flag in monster-drag, with a bit of Drama Club thrown in,and the best games were the ones we played in Scout Camps out of townin Sonoma or down on the Peninsula. Those three-day epics could getpretty hairy, with all-day hikes, epic battles with foam-and-bambooswords, casting spells by throwing beanbags and shouting "Fireball!"and so on. Good fun, if a little goofy. Not nearly as geeky as talkingabout what your elf planned on doing as you sat around a table loadedwith Diet Coke cans and painted miniatures, and more physically activethan going into a mouse-coma in front of a massively multiplayer gameat home.23The thing that got me into trouble were the mini-games in the hotels.Whenever a science fiction convention came to town, some LARPerwould convince them to let us run a couple of six-hour mini-games at thecon, piggybacking on their rental of the space. Having a bunch of enthu-siastic kids running around in costume lent color to the event, and wegot to have a ball among people even more socially deviant than us.The problem with hotels is that they have a lot of non-gamers in them,too — and not just sci-fi people. Normal people. From states that beginand end with vowels. On holidays.And sometimes those people misunderstand the nature of a game.Let's just leave it at that, OK?Class ended in ten minutes, and that didn't leave me with much timeto prepare. The first order of business were those pesky gait-recognitioncameras. Like I said, they'd started out as face-recognition cameras, butthose had been ruled unconstitutional. As far as I know, no court has yetdetermined whether these gait-cams are any more legal, but until theydo, we're stuck with them."Gait" is a fancy word for the way you walk. People are pretty good atspotting gaits — next time you're on a camping trip, chec