I stumbled out of my car, just remembering to take the keys. The barista had to ask twice for my order—I’d played with the weird new programs on my phone all the way to the front of the line without noticing. Ordering something at random, I sat at a table near the door, back to the wall, one hand clutching my phone and the other pouring too-hot coffee into my mouth.



This wasn’t my phone. Up close and not panicking, it was clear. The size was about right and it unlocked to my swipe code plus fingerprint, but not even the opening screen was right. Everything was oddly shiny, slick, with constantly moving animations. It didn’t have any ports or buttons at all—Apple’s wet dream. The frame felt unusually flexible and light. The screen bent almost in half without damage.



I loaded a random YouTube video, checked the device settings, then ran a couple of tests. The screen’s resolution and refresh rate were absurd, and my bandwidth was far beyond LTE. It wasn’t running any OS version I knew of. Maybe something from a foreign market? And even if that were true, it still didn’t have a consistent look and feel—like a rooted phone some enthusiast had spent way too much time on. There were a ton of custom apps installed, with bland default icons and weird names.



For one crazy second I considered a scenario where a hacker took over my phone and changed both the software and hardware. Download more RAM for your PC, indeed. Perhaps I should ditch it. It might be related to the morning’s violent events…that I was still not really processing.



Right. Had to think this through. Top priority was violence, not my phone. A weirdly dressed man attacked the office. Was there some fan convention in town? Had this crazy guy wandered over from the Staples Center or something? I poked at a few online events lists and came up with...nothing.



Not “no fan events this week in Los Angeles,” but no comic or superhero movie events ever—none for Star Trek or Star Wars, either. And...the Staples Center was apparently now the “LexCorp Center,” so named since...it opened in 1999, funded in large part by LexCorp to the tune of $120 million for naming rights for ten years, plus undisclosed additional money to lock up the rights for good in 2009. Multiple news stories agreed, from multiple news sources. Really.



So...new tab. Nope, no search results on popular superhero, sci-fi, and comics movies or TV shows either. Literally no pages...except for Ronald Reagan's SDI.



Interesting. There was a moderately popular annual “Western Comics Hoedown” in San Diego, but it was for...oh, naturally. Old-West themed serial comics. Ones about settlers, cowboys, and Native Americans.



New search. Tap to open results in new tabs, tap, tap, tap.



Umm...okay. Started out like you’d think in the 1920s. Cowboys and Indians. Focuses changed over the years. A lot of them were now about historic cultural problems faced by the Native Americans instead of mindless gunfights. Weird. I could totally dig this fandom, if it wasn’t an oddly detailed pile of completely made-up shit.



Close. Tabs.



I checked again. It still wasn’t April first.



So. This phone, which was not my phone, had been hacked and I was getting hilarious redirects on Google and DuckDuckGo, plus some humorous fake Wikipedia pages. Some sort of DNS thing was my guess. It was always DNS. How this helped the crazy person who broke into my building was anyone’s guess, but it seemed an odd coincidence if it was somehow unrelated. I hadn’t entered any of my website passwords again on this phone and the secured sites for all my stuff, including email, were coming up fine. Maybe my password locker software had been compromised?



In any case, I should be calling the police now. On another phone...but of course there wasn’t a pay phone so I’d have to hope that feature wasn’t compromised. Or borrow a phone, maybe.



I had just been in a pretty serious violent situation. I had what was likely a piece of evidence, and had also sort-of fled the scene. The shock was starting to wear off and my coffee was almost finished. I was out of excuses.



Thirty seconds into looking up the non-emergency number for the LAPD, a dialog box popped up, obscuring the screen. “Action contra-indicated by current threat profile. Gathering information for alternatives. Increasing user engagement level. Calculating…”



A console screen straight out of a nineties hacker movie opened under it, text scrolling fast. The video from before of the maniac blowing up the server room played in a corner, looping over and over again at the point where the cosplayer looked at the camera. Red lines picked out spots on his face and the image froze. In a flash, it changed and the same thing happened to...a picture of me. Right now.



A voice spoke directly in my ear. “Second level identity check complete. Initial threat analysis confirmed.”



I jumped, my phone dropping to the table. It was like someone had leaned over my shoulder and spoken directly into my ear.



“Members of TriD Information Systems targeted by armed threat, ID Slade Wilson. Police already aware of threat. 34% chance of informational penetration of Los Angeles law enforcement databases by forces willing to sell information to Slade Wilson. Contact with LAPD not suggested at this time.”



The voice was really loud and clear, easily cutting through the noise in the crowded Starbucks. Looking around there was no one nearby. It didn’t seem like anyone else heard it. No glances my way, no annoyed glares at the noise.



“What the hell is going on?” I said to no one.



“Narrowcast directional speakers targeting only the logged-in user,” the voice instantly replied.



It had an artificial tone to it, something subtly off, but the growly, L.A. Latina-accented voice still blew the Apple and Microsoft TTS voices out of the water. There was also a diagram on the screen that looked like overlapping arcs and a representation of a human head, seen from above, with the moving arcs hitting its ears.



The voice continued. “General interest by threat Slade Wilson indicated by theft of company HR local and cloud-based files, as well as network routing logs. Specific interest or target not indicated directly. Company IT operations logs stolen from server room, along with company on-premise file storage. Your darknet infrastructure endpoints, inserted into the company’s local network communications systems, are still secure based on access and network log analysis. Attack executed by a single USB-based attack package inserted directly into servers. No ongoing remote or local attacks detected. No worms detected. Services hashed, and CRC against ROM files in remote digital dead-drop storage location complete: pass. New index sets for all data integrity checks marked as ‘suspect’ from this point forward. Warning: five one-time security tokens remain for this operation. Note: these must be updated in person to preserve integrity of this security system. Scheduling reminder created. Calculating…



“Primary, secondary, and tertiary identity profiles secure. All thirty-three extent, weak online identities secure. Current residence secured by previous TDIS HR identity spoofing and protection measures. Ongoing passive informational surveillance status: secure. On-site physical security status: nominal. For further inquiries, see: identity obfuscation measures, home-site security infrastructure, remote site procedures. Suggested next course of action: finish your coffee and return to home site. Threat analysis, calculating...”



Another window opened and a series of wire-frame figures blurred through various poses and attacks. Numbers appeared and vanished. Areas were circled and highlighted, then immediately overlaid with new windows. From where I slumped in my chair, looking down at the phone, the angle was bad but the image was still crystal clear.



“Hard-light engine countermeasures currently unavailable. Low likelihood of directly countering Slade Wilson in current condition. Escape after close-range encounter problematic. Top-level summary: suggest avoiding contact at all costs, including loss of current alternate identity.”



This...wasn’t as easy to explain as web page spoofs and redirects. I slowly picked up my phone.



The moment I touched the screen, my browser window opened again. Good. I wasn’t going to sit here and talk to a phone in public—a magic super-phone which appeared to have a complex voice interface now.



Manually looking up Deathstroke resulted in some obviously fake news stories as well as a deleted (and much debated) “not notable” Wikipedia page for an international super-criminal. Nothing else appeared in Google. Then the window folded away and another window opened. Then another, and another. I swiped through them, scanning as fast as I could. Criminal records, straight out of digitized FBI case files, leading back to the ‘90s. Something called the CBI had a more detailed-looking personal profile. Homeland Security reports on terrorism and international crime. Something called...The Agency? And...the fuck...Cadmus analysis of his superpowers and possible related genetic features.



The phone slid out of my fingers, clacking against the table. I slugged back the—uh, tall mocha I guess it was—one last time.



“What-” I coughed on lukewarm coffee dregs, tried again in a whisper. “What are- No, go back. What 'alternate identity'? What are you talking about?”



The stolen, highly-illegal files minimized. My drivers license appeared on the screen. Then my employment records, letters from my bank, phone bills. All with my name on them.



I took a deep breath. “Right. Okay. That’s not an alternate identity. What do you think is my real name?”



The phone spoke again, directly into my ears. “Top level security query detected. Optical protection factor engaged. Scanning all frequencies and meta-wavelengths to confirm identity.”



A green light flashed from the front of the phone into my eyes. I blinked, hard.



“Confirmed. Reporting available information on public and other active identities: Current public identity established December 12, 2015. Original public identity wiped from all local systems. Date of this data deletion event not available. Documentation on this event not available. Secure visual output activated.”



The phone’s screen went totally black, then a logo appeared in my vision, floating a few inches in front of my face. It flickered slightly, like a sci-fi hologram. Maybe from a visual equivalent of the audio system?



It was a pair of dark shades, square and retro, on a green background.



“Displaying primary branding for your online business identity: Calculator.”