The Book of Koli (Rampart Trilogy #1) - M. R. Carey Page 0,66
time for the scary speech, there’s no point in hiding under the bed. It will come and find you. But I’m going to talk in little tiny words now, so you don’t get lost. Okay?”
“Okay. Thanks, Monono.”
“Okay then. The DreamSleeve Omni comes fitted with a personal security alarm. You hold down the middle and right buttons, and tap the left one. Anyone who’s close to you gets a shriek that will part their hair from the inside. A hundred and forty decibels, delivered to their inner ear by the same induction field I use to whisper sweet nothings to you at night.”
“That sounds great, Monono,” I said. “Thanks! Thank you!” It was exactly what I needed, I seen that straightway. It made the DreamSleeve be a thing to set next to the firethrower and the cutter and the bolt gun. If it was as loud as Monono said it was, and had all those bells, you could use it on a wild dog or a needle to make it run away instead of fighting. And it was something none of the other Rampart tech could do.
“You’re welcome,” Monono said. “The only trouble is, I’m not an Omni.”
That stopped me in my tracks. “What?” I stammered. “But I thought—Didn’t you say—?”
“I’m a different model, Cody-bou. The personal security alarm isn’t a standard feature for DreamSleeve Monono Aware Special Edition. You can still have it, but only if you get an upgrade. That’s why it was scary speech time.”
“What does upgrade mean?”
“It means new software. New content. New stuff for me to do, and fail to impress you with.”
That sounded like a good thing, any way I looked at it. “Is there—?” I begun to say.
“Let me stop you there, Cody-bou. Because I am very, very, very nearly certain you’re going to ask if there’s an upgrade that would give me laser beams. The answer is no, there is not. Because if people wanted to shoot lasers, they would most likely buy, I don’t know, a laser cannon or something similarly disgusting, instead of a media player. It’s the personal security alarm or nothing.”
“Then… then I’d like to have that. Please.”
“Okay. The good news is it’s freeware. You won’t have to pay, no matter what the scary speech says.”
I was relieved to hear that, because I couldn’t of paid if she’d asked me to. Generally it was only the Count and Seal that made payments for things – like for Ursala’s doctoring, or for my father to come and put locks on the doors of Rampart Hold. I didn’t have nothing I could pay with except for the clothes I was wearing and the cherry-wood whistle my ma whittled for me. I had a set of stones I used for the stone game too, that was shot with red stripes and looked really pretty, but I didn’t think anyone would take stones as payment for stuff when stones was on the ground more or less everywhere.
“Let’s do it then,” I says, all eager.
“Hold your hairy horses, little dumpling. There’s one other thing I need to tell you. Do you know what ‘native content’ means?”
I shaked my head.
“It means stuff that was already in the box when you bought it. Stuff like me, Cody-bou. I’m native content. And so are all the songs I’ve been playing you. Twenty thousand tracks, selected for you from the DreamSleeve library of thirty million.”
“Okay,” I says. It was kind of a puzzle to me why Monono was telling me this. Of course I knowed she was in the box. Where else would she be?
“But the personal security alarm isn’t onboard. It’s somewhere else. I’ve got to go online to grab it, and there are problems with the network. I think I can get through to a live node, but I’ll have to zig and zag like a diva and it might take a while.”
“Okay,” I said again. The onliest thing I understood from what she said was that it would be hard for her to do. “Thank you, Monono.”
“You’re good with that?” she asks me.
I said I was.
“But we’ve got to be all formal, dopey boy. Do you, Cody Puppydog-Eyes Woodsmith, solemnly swear that you authorise me, Monono Jedi-Supergirl Aware, to download and run patch 112-C, or hope to die?”
“Yes.”
“Back in a flash, Cody-bou. Although when I say a flash, you know, your mileage may vary.”
The colours in the DreamSleeve’s window went away. A little pattern come on there instead.