Base Metal (The Sword Book 2)

that.
The man at the head of the espo column was the only one without armor: the agency handler. Firenze focused his binocs and confirmed the man fit the part. He wore the wide-lapeled black coat, black shirt, and silver tie, his hair was slicked to his skull in a side-part, his jaw chiseled from stone. Man or woman, the blackshirts always looked the same: shiny black suit, holovid-perfect faces, and freezing eyes. The espos were faceless because the agent was their face. He spoke as the State, and they were his hands.
The protest dwindled, but their core held firm, just over thirty-strong. The woman-in-pink placed herself at the front, hands out, unarmed, and open. She did not flinch. Firenze could appreciate that, but it also made clear that she didn't come from down here. Everyone below midward knew what espos meant: the State had cast its disapproving eye upon you, and you would do well to recant. Only uptown tourists had the right alchemy of naivete and privilege to be stupid enough to stand.
The march stopped a meter short, placed her face to chest with that silver tie and smiling face, cast against a wall of black. "Run." Firenze whispered. He knew what was about to happen. These activists had just stepped in it. Anyone from down here knew what was coming.
The pink woman stepped forward, crossed the gap between the lines. Through binocular tunnels, he saw her animated gestures, her impassioned pleas. The agent only smiled, serene.
Firenze almost wished he had a parabolic mic, so he could hear the argument, but then he remembered what happened to people who pointed things at agency men. His door wasn't near thick enough to save him.
The pink woman had grown heated. Even from here, he could see the wild flail of her arms, her growing desperation to be understood - to be heard. Firenze could imagine her pleas: enforcement of Article Two, avoiding 'betrayal of the Charter'. Suze used to preach those, before Monterrey. The protests used to be fun. Sound-cannons and pressure-hoses hadn't been the best, but the afterparties had been wild. Then came Monterrey, and everything went wrong.
Suze stopped talking about Charters, started talking about bombs. Kendrix went from slapping digital graffiti to slicing accounts. And the cops? They got replaced by espos. Firenze told them all to pound sand, and he'd walked away. His family had given to much to push him up this far, and he wasn't throwing it away to chase a falling rock. The Authority was done. He just had to be somewhere safe when it crashed.
Those kids in the square? Certainly midwarders, immune to the fallout. If he got roped into something like that, he would get shoved right back into dronetown. He was too close to breaking free. His family was counting on him, his scholarship, and the chance that he could pull them over the baffles.
Down in the square, the pink woman's arguments had accomplished nothing, and the blackshirt stood stonefaced and smirking. Then the protestors made a fatal error. Perhaps in desperation or fear, the pink woman raised her bullhorn and screamed in the agent's face. Firenze heard the buzzing-squawk echo through the canyons, content lost in the noise. The response, though, was quite clear.
The agent spoke, and his voice boomed through every speaker and vidscreen in the plaza. Firenze heard the words clear from ten stories above and below, from every angle and none. "This is unlawful, and you will disperse."
That got her. Despite herself, she flinched. She gaped towards the heavens and the thunderous voice. The State had spoken.
One of the other students didn't take the same lesson. A young man, face half-covered and collar popped, took a swing at the agent. The response was a boiling black tide as the espos swarmed.
Firenze didn't stay to watch, because he already knew how it ended.
The worst part was, he couldn't even blame the Authority, not really. He owed them too much. They'd won the war, given him the tests that bought him out of dronetown. It was their fancy sim-school he attended, it was their maintenance that kept the net running. Their problem was, they were outmoded and couldn't realize it.
What good was a lumbering giant in a world of millisecond corrections? The Authority did everything big: industry and government and corporate bureaucracies. They fought over territory in meat-space when the net was the real battle. Every time they got on the airwaves and asked for 'patience and understanding', he'd roll his eyes. They'd put up some cool, collected, conservative old man to explain that 'progress took time' and that Article Two was a 'work in progress', and then wonder why the protests popped and why they couldn't stamp out wildfires with riot police.
They were dinosaurs who saw the vapor trail split the Cretaceous sky, but kept fighting over good dirt. In a few moments, their contest wouldn't matter, but they couldn't understand the world had already changed.
It was almost unfair.
The Authority had done its job too well. They'd rebuilt civilization, united the world, cracked the Bergman field, and brought humanity into a technological age to rival pre-Collapse antiquity. They deserved congratulations, a pat on the back, and a reminder to close the door on the way out.
Article Two had been quite clear: 'When, in the light of years, it has become apparent that no threat is presented to the united planet, and civilization has been restored to the people, the Terran Provisional Authority shall return all power to the rightful civil government. To establish a free and universal republic, the Authority shall divest itself of all rights assumed for the duration of the crisis.' The section went on dig into specifics, little points like the restoration of free speech, the end of universal service, the right to mass assembly, the ability to own property outside the State, and even the franchise and an empowered Senate. It was the second paragraph of the Charter, so it wasn't hard to