He went in, to be immediately stopped by a very large man with a very broad forehead and pale, almost invisible eyebrows. “Your bag,” said the security man, who was wearing a pink Lucky Dragon fanny pack exactly like the one Rydell had worn in LA. As a matter of fact, Rydell’s was in the very duffel the guy was demanding.
“Please,” Rydell said, handing the bag over. Lucky Dragon security 88 were supposed to say that: please. It was on Mr. Park’s notebook, and anyway when you asked somebody for their bag, you were admitting you
thought they might shoplift, so you might as well be polite about it. The security man narrowed his eyes. He put the bag in a numbered cubicle behind his station and handed Rydehl a Lucky Dragon logo tag that looked like an oversized drink coaster with the number five on the back. It was the size it was, Rydell knew, because it had been determined that this size made the tags just that much too big to fit into most ~ pockets, thereby preventing people from pocketing, forgetting, and $~ wandering away with them. Kept costs down. Everything about Lucky
Dragon was worked out that way. You sort of had to admire them.
‘You re welcome Rydell said He headed for the ATM in the back Lucky Dragon International Bank He knew it was watching him as he
walked up to it pulling his wallet from his back pocket
— – “I’m here to get a chip issued,” he said.
Identify yourself please Lucky Dragon ATMs all had this same voice a weird uptight strangled little castrato voice and he wondered why that was But you could be sure they d worked it out probably it
kept people from standing around, bullshitting with the machine. But Rydell knew that you didn’t want to do that anyway, because the suck- – – ers would pepper-spray you. They were plastered with notices to that effect too, although he doubted anyone ever actually read them. What the notices didn’t say, and Lucky Dragon wasn’t telling, was that if you tried seriously to dick with one, drive a crowbar into the money slot, say,
the thing would mist you and itself down with water and then electrify itself.
“Berry Rydell,” he said, taking his Tennessee driver’s license from his wallet and inserting the business end into the ATM’s reader.
“Palm contact.”
Rydell pressed his hand within the outline of a hand. He hated the way that felt. Bad cootie factor with those palm-scan things. Hand grease.
He wiped his palm on his trousers.
“Please enter your personal identification code.” 89 Rrdell did, working through his mremonic to the two cans of 7-Up.
“brocessing credit request,” the thng said, sounding as if someone were queezing its balls.
l4,rdell looked around and saw thathe was pretty much the only customei aside from a woman with gray lair and black leather pants, who was ‘iving the checker a hard time in what sounded to Rydehl like Gernan.
“Iransaction completed,” the ATN said. Rydell turned back in time to se~ a Lucky Dragon credit chip em~ge from the chip slot. He shoved it parway back in, to see the availablecome up on the screen. Not bad. Not a~l at all. He pocketed the chip put his wallet away, and turned towad the GlobEx concession, whid also doubled as the local USPO. Likethe ATM, this was another purpose-built node or swelling in the sam plastic wall. They hadn’t ha~ one of these on Sunset, and Prai.egod had had to double as GlobEx clerk and/or USPO employee, the litter causing her occasionally tofrown, as her parents’ sect identified ill things federal as aspects of Sitan.
tIe who hesitates, RydelI’s father had taught him, is safe, and Rydell had tried hard, in the course of his ife, to practice that sort of benign prOcrastination. Just about everythin8 that had ever landed him in deep shit he knew, had been the result of not hesitating. There was in him, he udn’t know why, that which simply went for it, and somehow at the wort possible time.
Look before you leap. Considerconsequences. Think about it.
He thought about it. Someone had taken advantage of his brief but unvilling sojourn in Selwyn Tong’s VR corridor to convey the suggestior that he should pick up his credit chip from this particular ATM, anc then check GlobEx. This couk most easily have been Tong him-sell, speaking as it were through a hack channel, or it might have been soneone, anyone, else, hacking intowhat Rydell supposed was scarcely a world-class secure site. The hook of the change that had been wrought for Rydell’s benefit, though, had ~ad hacker written all over it. In Rylell’s experience, hackers just couldn’t resist showing off, and they terded to get all arty. And, he kne~w, they could get your ass in trouble an usually did.