The Peacock Cloak

apart from the population at large in social housing projects). In fact, since he had no bug eyes, no computer, no phone and no credit card, there was hardly enough of a trace of him out in the public domain on which to base a valid class evaluation.
    Richard was an isolate, a one-off. He had been a strange introverted child who his adoptive parents had never quite learnt to love. He left them at 17 and now had very little contact with them, though they had bought his little flat in Guildford for him, and his mother still sent him money and food parcels.

    Three young men in suits came by, walking briskly and overtaking first Richard and then Jenny. They worked in the City as commodity traders. They’d all got bugs on, and they were using the setting called LCV – or Local Consensual View – which allowed bug eye wearers to retransmit the signals they were receiving on an open channel, so that others in their immediate vicinity could pick them up. This enabled all three of the young men to banter with a fourth young commodity trader called Freddy who wasn’t physically present.
    “Freddy, you stupid fuck. Is it true you lost 90k in one hour yesterday?”
    “ Freddy you stupid fuck ,” muttered Richard under his breath, storing away for later examination this strange and utterly bewildering amalgamation of affection and abuse.
    “Freddy you stupid fuck,” he said out loud.
    He laughed. One of the young men turned round and glared at him.

    Richard couldn’t see Freddy, of course, or hear his reply. But Jenny, out of momentary curiosity, blinked on LCV in her bugs to get a look at him. (This was the principle behind the bug eye boom: the one who isn’t there was always more interesting than the one who is.)
    “Yeah, I lost 90k,” Freddy was saying. “But last week I netted 50 mill. Being a decent trader’s about taking risks, my children. Watch Uncle Freddy and learn.”
    So he was just a boastful little boy in a suit like his friends, Jenny concluded, glancing at the clock on her tool bar, then blinking up the internet to check the train times. Options were offered down the left hand side of her field of vision. She blinked first the ‘travel information’ folder, and then ‘rail’. A window appeared, inviting her to name the start and end points of her proposed journey. She mumbled the names of the stations, blinked, and was given details of the next two trains. It seemed she was cutting it a bit fine, so she paid for a ticket as she walked – it only took four blinks – and walked a little faster.
    Suddenly a famous TV show host called Johnny Lamb was right in front of her. His famous catchphrase was ‘Come on in’. Now he invited her to ‘come on in’ to a chain store behind him that specialised in fashion accessories. Jenny smiled. Shops had only recently taken to using LCV to advertise to passers-by and it was still a novelty to see these virtual beings appearing in front of you in the street. She walked straight through Johnny Lamb, blinking LCV off again as she did so.

    Richard, of course, had no means of knowing that Johnny Lamb was there at all, but he noticed Jenny’s increase in speed and hurried to match it. They were almost at the station. He felt in his pocket for his ticket – his cardboard off-peak return ticket paid for with cash – and entered the station concourse.
    Two police officers called Kenneth and Chastity were waiting below the departures board. They wore heavy-duty bug eyes with specially hardened surfaces, night vision and access to encrypted personal security data, and they were watching for illegals in the crowd.
    ID cards contained tiny transmitters which could be located by sensors mounted in streets and public places. Ken’s and Chas’ bugs showed little green haloes over the heads of people who had valid ID and giant red arrows above people who didn’t – illegal immigrants, for instance, or escaped prisoners. It was rather entertaining to watch illegals trying to slip unnoticed through the crowd, with one of those red arrows bouncing up and down over their heads.
    Jenny (of course) had a halo. Richard had an amber question mark. It indicated that he was carrying a valid ID card but that he’d either got a criminal record or a record of ID problems of some sort, and therefore should be questioned if he was behaving suspiciously in any way.
    Well he was behaving suspiciously, thought Constable Kenneth Wright, nudging his partner. The man didn’t even