Los Angeles in 2050 was a hectic blend of past and future; it was one of the last great centers of business left in the US, and usually more interested in building new things than refurbishing old ones. The roads teemed with autocabs and rolling lounges, with a crisscross web of maglev trains and hypertubes bringing commuters in from all over the country. Steel and concrete and biowall buildings covered the hills and valleys like a carpet, bristling with solar trees that glittered green and black across the rooftops. Above them all the sky was thick with nulis, buzzing through the air in a million directions, so that the entire city looked like a hive of polymer bees in every possible shape and size.
Marisa lived in El Mirador, a midsize barrio that baked in the hot sun just east of downtown—not rich like Anja’s neighborhood, but not destitute, either. Vast swaths of LA were practically shantytowns these days, but Mirador was holding on.
One of the reasons for Mirador’s tenacity zoomed past on the road, a dark phantom in Marisa’s peripheral vision: the distinctive black outline of a Dynasty Falcon. Don Francisco Maldonado was the richest man in Mirador, and he helped keep the peace with his small army of private enforcers in Dynasty autocars. With most police work handled by remote drone, the Maldonado enforcers were almost as fast as, and certainly more attentive than, the actual law—though even the law was in Maldonado’s pocket, thanks to his eldest son working for the local precinct. The Falcon didn’t slow down as it passed Marisa, but she knew the man inside was giving her a long, hard look. There was no one in the world Don Francisco hated more than her father.
Marisa rubbed her prosthetic arm and kept walking.
Her family’s restaurant was barely a mile from their house, and an easy walk even in the scorching heat. Up until two years ago they’d lived behind the restaurant in a connected apartment, but her father had scrimped and saved and moved them to their new house the instant he could afford it. Sahara had moved in to the old apartment soon after; she’d never said why she left her parents’ place, and Marisa had never asked. Marisa’s parents hadn’t pried either, and Marisa figured they saw it as an opportunity to be a good influence on their daughter’s friend. Sahara paid her bills and kept her grades up, so it all worked out. Marisa didn’t imagine Sahara would make it to lunch, being too busy with the video and her various media contacts, but that was just as well. Sahara’s life was a twenty-four-hour vidcast, and Marisa wanted more time with her hair before the entire internet saw her in it.
Marisa’s djinni pinged with a call from her mom; she blinked to answer. “Hey, Mami.”
“Oye, chulita. Olaya told me you left; are you going to school?”
“I’m about halfway to you, actually. You got chilaquiles?”
“For breakfast? Ay, muchacha, this is why you don’t have a boyfriend. Who wants to kiss that breath?”
Marisa rolled her eyes. “Ay, Mami . . .”
“You’ll get your homework done online?”
“Of course.”
“I’ll tell Papi to start some chilaquiles. What does Bao want?”
“How’d you know Bao was coming?”
“I’m your mother, Marisita. I know everything.”
“Then you know better than I do what he wants,” said Marisa with a laugh. “See you in a few.” She closed the call and waited at a busy corner, watching the autocars weave through traffic in their intricate hive mind dance.
Each storefront she passed read Marisa’s ID from her djinni, checked it against her commerce profile, and filled its window with personalized ads. Most people would be getting pop-ups directly to their djinni, but Marisa had firewalled those out years ago. The last thing she needed was a two-for-one hairstyling coupon blocking her vision. The wide front window of a clothing store pulled a picture of Marisa from somewhere on the net, shopped their latest sundress onto her, and displayed it in HD for the entire street to see: On Sale! Only ￥20/$123! She stopped to look and the 3D image rotated; Marisa was pretty sure the automated photo alteration had slimmed her waist a bit as well, just to make the dress look more appealing. Clever, but rude. She considered hacking in through their Wi-Fi and displaying some incendiary political figure in the same dress, just for revenge, but laughed and walked away. It wasn’t worth the time.
The family’s restaurant was called San Juanito, named for the Mexican logging town where her father had lived as a boy. It was still early for lunch, not quite eleven, but the lights were on and the ad board was already grabbing the IDs of passersby to offer them the daily specials. It read Marisa’s as soon as she got close, identified her as a regular, and greeted her by name.
“Welcome back to San Juanito, Marisa Carneseca! Would you like a free horchata today?”
She walked inside, and caught her mother halfway to a table, a tray of waters balanced carefully on her hand. “Buenos días, Mami.” She kissed her on the cheek. “Is Bao here yet?”
“Table twelve.” Guadalupe de Carneseca was a tall, broad woman, fair-skinned, and with her hair dyed a faint reddish blond. “How was practice?”
“Better every game. Just you today?”
“Everyone else is in school,” said her mother, “unless you want to put on an apron and help wait tables.”