Jerome's Coat

    Jerome left the office building.
    Before he did so, the doorman greeted him and waved his wand across the fabric of Jerome’s coat. There was a reassuring beep.
    “Have a fine day, sir,” said the doorman. He opened the door with a press of a button by his very black hand.
    Jerome entered the street. The door was set back in such a way as to afford him grounds for reconnaissance before entering the flow of pedestrians. Jerome was very quick and very accurate at his scan. He entered the traffic.
    He was empty-handed today. This was a rarity. Usually, he carried his antique briefcase with him, full of paper—an idiosyncrasy, and or course an anachronism, as his suit handled all of Jerome’s business needs. In a sense, even Jerome’s memory was woven into the fabric of his suit.
    But it was more than that. The suit was a thinking garment: it scanned the market and made exchanges for him even as he sat engaged in an entirely different enterprise; sweet-talking a client, for example, which was still something that could not be done by the suit alone.
    The suit was expensive, of course. It was worth more than a year’s salary for any ordinary worker, such as the man who fixed the plumbing in Jerome’s quaint 20th century condo. Thus, the suit was protected by the coat. The coat made him invisible near alley mouths and other insidious environs—but it’s most basic purpose was to maintain his personal Space. His Space was set at three feet. He believed this was an acceptable Space. If he were a woman it would have been twice this, or more . . .
    The coat had cost Jerome more than even the suit was worth, in pure monetary value, and he paid for it every time he downloaded a new virus shield (virus in this sense being anything that could infect the suit and compromise, or divert, its abilities) which was almost every day. But he had to surrender to the expense, because the coat protected the suit and the suit was his life.
    Because of the effectiveness of his coat, Jerome was not the kind of man who had to worry about floating ads. He had originally regarded the floating ads with a pedestrian fear and disgust, but then he had upgraded. Suddenly, the swarms of glowing, cackling molecules were regarded in a different light. It was one of the humorous asides he now enjoyed when he walked down the street: the sight of the unprotected plugging their ears, ducking and running, or even, in vain, chasing after the holographic images which like clever mosquitoes always maintained their proximity. The ads were smart, they had been designed with ingenius methods of seeking, or hunting, their prey, (the methods of which were carefully concealed, but Jerome had a hunch it involved complex bioelectrical signatures) and as they were not actually physical in the sense that an insect of an animal was, they were difficult to destroy. In most cases it required the services of an adkiller, and that was expensive. There was a limit of course, set by the city government, at no more than five ads per citizen, and only during daylight hours, but that rule was often broken and tourists, of course, were not protected. He had seen the worst result: the helpless man or woman sitting against a building wall, starved and insane and barely visible behind the cloud of adflies. When he finally died, most would disperse, seeking other prey, but always there remained the stubborn or the stupid few, sometimes hovering over a body even after it was sealed in plastic and dispatched.
    But Jerome had no such worries. His coat protected him from adflies.
    What it did not protect him from were the crazed admen who would rush even the most expensive coat with magblades designed to pierce the field and, if lucky, the coat and then the suit, thereby infecting it with adware.
    These were suicidal attacks however, for most coats reacted almost instantaneously with deadly lancets of killing voltage, and the adman was reduced to charred flesh, perhaps an ad hovering above him like an insect after putrefaction.
    Jerome was not walking far today—only to lunch at one of his usual Cantonese places, and then to his brother’s law firm, a skyscraper much like the one he had just left. He was not worried about taking a cab for his coat was working perfectly today and most cabs these days encompassed the passenger in a succession of virtual reality ads until the destination was arrived at. The only alternative was private transportation, and even Jerome was loathe for that expense.
    Jerome had many reasons to feel secure. Although practically all “adcrime” was entangled in legislation, in perpetuity, it seemed, all other convicted criminals and diagnosed “personality-types” (as defined by the brainscan device invented by the Reed Security Group, in license to the federal government) were given an implant that could be sensed within twenty-five meters; this was a standard feature of ties like the one he wore. In fact, today’s tie would provide a verbal warning when anyone with an implant came within a quarter of a mile. He had turned this feature off. While admittedly useful, the city was so crowded with the convicted and the insane that his ears would be assailed by warnings. He considered it an emergency function for when he was in foreign territory. Not that he had been to any recently.

    *
   

    *

    So Jerome did not know that the affable Asian man who served him his traditional noodle soup was a registered sociopath; and as he was drinking his soup he thought nothing of the waiter walking toward him with the fat-blade knife in his hand; and when it entered his skull he was defenseless because one cannot drink soup while a coat is activated—the field tends to repel waiters and even the dish itself--
    Jerome died and two things happened simultaneously: Jerome’s suit notified the authorities of his deceased state, and the killer slipped his arms into Jerome’s coat and was fried by electricity. The coat, and the man, were dead.
    Gently, the adflies began to gather.