Ian Creasey - The Edge of the Map

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The Edge of the Map

by Ian Creasey

Our June issue seems to be almost a special multi-media issue. James Patrick

Kelly’s story investigated a brand new medium, while Robert Reed reflected on a

familiar entertainment form that regularly invades the average living room. Now Ian

Creasey, whose first story for Asimov’s--”The Hastillan Weed”--appeared in our

February 2006 issue, examines a fairly recent phenomenon that has swallowed the

lives of many Internet users, and takes a look at where it’s going and what it may

lead to when it reaches...

* * * *

Susanna listened resentfully to the helicopters spraying nanocams over the

foothills. She kept her gaze locked on the plantation, rubbing her tense neck as she

waited to get the shot. It was a long time since she’d filmed her own footage. She

fiddled with the controls on her ancient glasses, practicing framing the scene,

zooming in, panning back for a wide angle.

“How long will this take?” asked Ivo. “This isn’t what I’m here for. We need

to head off soon.” In her peripheral vision, she saw him twitch restlessly as he kept

glancing in all directions, like a nervous bird in a garden full of cats.

“I want to film a few things before I’m finally obsolete,” Susanna said. “It

shouldn’t be long now.” She saw no sign of movement downhill. The cannabis

plants, which had grown four meters tall in the African sun, might still harbor a few

defiant hippies. Should she move along the ridge for a better angle?

A bar of green light split the sky in two. The crack of ionized air rolled across

the mountain like a manmade thunderbolt. Susanna adjusted her glasses, zooming in

to focus on the flames. The smell of burning cannabis rose up the hillside.

She gave the glasses to Ivo, then walked a few steps down the hill. “Keep

looking at me, but film as much fire behind me as you can.”

Ivo donned the glasses with little enthusiasm. He brushed aside the fringe of

his ash-blond hair, then gave her a perfunctory thumbs-up sign.

Susanna stood up straight, took two deep breaths, and raised her voice over

the crackle of flames. “As the Blind Spot shrinks, more secrets are revealed.”

Another zap echoed around the hills. “When the nanocams found a drugs plantation,

American satellites fried it.”

A gust of wind fanned aromatic smoke toward her, and Susanna suppressed a

tickle in her throat. She wiped her brow with a sponsored sweatband. “I can smell

the burning from here. With the sun and the fire and the lasers from the sky, I’m

roasting like an ant under a magnifying glass.” She included these sensory details to

emphasize that she reported from the spot, unlike all the bloggers who’d comment

on the nanocam footage from the comfort of their own homes.

“In the last few days, soldiers have arrested dozens of terrorists as soon as

the cams spotted them. But who else--and what else--is still out there?” She left a

dramatic pause before signing off. “This is Susanna Munro reporting from Zaire.”

Now she let herself cough volcanically. Her eyes watering, she stumbled up

the bare slope, following Ivo to his battered Land Rover.

The vehicle, parked in the shade of a huge rock, was a blessed harbor from

the heat and smoke. Ivo started the engine and turned up the air-conditioning, then

returned her glasses with a grimace of distaste.

“Thanks,” said Susanna, smiling. “They won’t bite you.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about,” Ivo said, and she felt that he only barely

refrained from adding “old chap.” Despite the heat, he wore a formal shirt and

waistcoat as if he were starring in a twentieth century movie about a nineteenth

century explorer.

Susanna played the recording. The obsolete glasses pixellated the image on

zoom shots, and Ivo had jiggled his head while filming her. But the segment was

usable. Watching her spiel, she winced at the sight of her grey hair. The last time she

had used these glasses--or their backup system--her hair had been Pre-Raphaelite

red. And in those days, simple moisturizer had kept wrinkles at bay. Throughout the

past week she had felt the tropical sun beating through her high-factor sunblock,

scouring crevasses in her skin, tanning it like old leather.

But that hardly mattered now. There would be no more stories after this one,

no more dispatches from the field. The advancing nanocams made images

accessible to everyone, and frontline journalism redundant.

A black helicopter roared overhead, spraying its invisible cargo. Inside the

Land Rover, both their comps beeped to signal Net access. Susanna plugged in her

glasses, uploading all the footage recorded this morning and last night--when the

doomed hippies had got high for the last time, vowing that the Man could have their

joints when he pried them from their cold dead hands. She sent the update to various

channels she freelanced for, then began scanning her mail.

Ivo interrupted. “That’s where we’re going,” he said, pointing to a map on his

laptop screen. An overlay showed nanocam coverage at 98 percent, and the Blind

Spot shrank by a few more pixels as she stared. “Are you ready?” he asked.

“‘Forward, forward, let us range.’“

Susanna hesitated, thinking of the desperate criminals who could still be out

there, hiding from the advancing cameras. If she met them, she might be giving them

their last chance to commit rape, torture, murder.

And yet this was her last chance too, her last opportunity for an old-fashioned

scoop, here in the continent where scoops began when New York Herald reporter

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