Editor’s note: This is the ninth installment in a 15-part serialized mystery by Oakland’s Robin Sloan. Catch up on any chapters you’ve missed at www.mercurynews.com.
CHAPTER 9: Shark Teeth
I was stalking the boardwalk laid across the bay between San Francisco and Oakland with the Bay Area’s greatest detective, hunting for a missing genius with just one clue: the phrase ENTRA LA LENGUA. Enter the language? Get in the tongue? Not much of a clue.
Scheme had shaken down her best and nerdiest sources; none of them could make sense of it. So, we were headed back to Rose Quartz Records, Scheme muttering to herself, when we heard a scrap of conversation from a phone kiosk:
“…new teeth? For LENGUA, yeah.” A teenager — excruciatingly cool-looking, her hair shimmering iridescent — was making a purchase. “THANK you, yerb,” she said, accepting her merchandise. “I’ve been DYING out here.”
Scheme sidled up to the kiosk, which sold burner phones, vape pens and other electronics disposable and nefarious. After a medium-long negotiation — I heard her say, “I am NOT anyone’s GRANDmother” — she returned, dangling two plastic clamshells.
“Mr. Portacio, meet your new teeth.”
I cracked open the packaging. Inside, I found what looked like the centerpiece of a low-quality vampire costume, except these teeth were bright orange, and they had oversized tusks like a warthog’s. Did I really have to wear plastic warthog jaws?
“She didn’t have many to choose from,” Scheme said. “Apparently, all anybody wants is these teeth, because they connect to something called LENGUA. The girl in the kiosk said she can’t even give away vape pens, because you can’t vape and … do whatever this is … at the same time.”
She ripped her teeth out of their plastic and showed them to me. They were shiny-gold, as sharp and close-packed as a shark’s.
Scheme traced her finger along the molars to find a hidden button. A line of pinprick lights on the front of the teeth lit up, one-two-three-four, then drooped and wavered: two dots, then three, then two again. Just like the bars on my phone.
“Here goes nothing,” Scheme said. “ENTRA LA LENGUA.”
She pulled her face into a grimace to get her lips around the teeth; I pressed my warthog tusks into place. When they were secure, I reached a finger into my mouth like I was digging for a shred of spinach. When I pressed the hidden button, I felt a cold pulse that was almost, but not quite, taste.
Then, another pulse. It tasted like something between a Szechuan peppercorn and a 9-volt battery. I gasped. My teeth vibrated.
I looked at Scheme, who was staring straight ahead, eyes narrow, nose flaring slightly. She looked like an expert aviator attempting to fly a refrigerator. Lights swam across her shark teeth.
We were connected to something. But what?
I closed my eyes and tried to navigate this new space. Out of nowhere, I tasted a penny. I touched my tongue to the edge of a tusk. I tasted a pickle! I could discern no pattern here; no message. How did people communicate using this thing? I tasted a foamy wash of strawberry, and then, suddenly, felt a sensation, undeniable: the tip of another tongue tapping ever-so-gently against mine.
I spat out the mass of plastic. Scheme was looking back at me. Had she …? Her eyes were merry.
She folded her hands in her lap and shifted her gaze to look out across the bay. Her face took on the calculating focus of a safe-cracker.
This was Scheme at work.
A band of tech workers all wearing the same brand of jodhpurs passed us on the boardwalk, gossiping loudly. Then two teenagers, strangely silent; were they wearing internet teeth? They were followed by a falafel vendor pushing his cart. He stopped and stretched, looked out across the water, checked the messages on his phone, then continued on his way.
I watched passers-by for another hour while Scheme sat staring into space, puzzling out the parameters of this strange new network. Finally, she leapt to her feet and yanked the shark teeth out from between her lips.
“Phwah! Itsh horrible.” Her voice sounded thick. She stretched her lips, made a grimace, then a pucker, another grimace. “It’s also ingenious. Quintessandra designed this; there’s no question.” She waggled her tongue, stretched her cheeks with her fingers. “I need a boba,” she said. “Badly.”
So what was the LENGUA’s secret? Was there a code, or …?
Scheme shook her head. “No, no. I wasted too much time hunting for symbols. It’s totally sensory. There are signposts, breadcrumbs … literally, they taste like breadcrumbs. I’ve got it now. And, Will, I’ve figured out why the kids like it so much.”
Because they had finally become a different species, totally alien from us?
“No… because it’s not useful!” she hooted. “You can’t buy or sell anything. Don’t you understand? You can’t even SAY anything.”
The generation born in the yoke of the digital had made their exodus to the promised land: an internet without arguments.
Somehow, Quintessandra had led them.
Tomorrow, Part 10: Basilisk House (June 16)
