Read Shine for Free Online Page B

signal asking for a voice call. It was a local number for sure, but held no digital signature or embedded business card. Inácio let the messenger blink twice before he threw his second empty coconut into the public recycler. The thing chewed and swallowed and made mechanical noises while sending the biomass down into the city's entrails. After the third blink he eye-commanded the app open to see what this mystery was all about. What Inácio didn't expect was the voice of a kid on the other side of the line.
    "Mr. Lima?" said the voice, childish but confident.
    "Is this some kind of joke, boy? Don't you have anything more productive to do than play tricks on me?" Inácio felt anger rush in his veins and was about to close the connection when, after a second, the kid replied.
    "This is no trick. We'd like to know if you'd be interested in doing a little research for us. We pay well." The voice couldn't belong to anyone past fourteen. But the young man was very determined and eloquent.
    "What the hell are you doing, kid? I tell you I'm going to track that number and..."
    "I represent a group of investors interested in hiring you," the voice interrupted. The voice wasn't confident. It was rehearsed and foreign. Inácio was staring at the disconnect button, pressed by his gaze but not yet released. He couldn't believe he was giving the prankster this much time to perform. "We're curious about a certain wikindustry," the brat continued, "and we'd like your professional opinion about it."
    "You got it wrong. I'm not a business consultant."
    "We know. You're a self-employed sustainability analyst. A greenman, formerly working for CrediCarb and also a war veteran. You're exactly the man we want."
    Shock and shivers ran over his skin. Long seconds may have passed before Inácio noticed he was scratching under his collarbone, right where the logo of the GreenWar militia was tattooed. It was a primitive reaction, an echo of his time being hunted in the countryside when people like him, who broke with peaceful protests and took arms to fight for the environment, had to come back home after peace was reestablished. Then, he thought, everybody had them as the good guys. He soon learned that not only industrialists, landowners and cattle farmers hated him. For many of those caught in the crossfire, especially those dependent on the rich employers, he was a terrorist and an assassin. And for many years after the wall was built, right here in the city, he felt like he needed to hide the mark. Who'd have guessed that almost two decades later it'd become a fashionable design, its history blurred by trends and blended with the new times?
    The button-down straightened automatically as Inácio withdrew his shaking hand. The tattoo, just a bit darker than his own skin, had turned the color of diluted wine, hot and prickly. The train was nowhere to be seen.
    "Besides," the client continued, "we knew Lúcio. And he told us to look for you if we needed that kind of job."
    The prickling under his shirt had stopped. They talked in a dedicated moIP connection for no more than ten minutes, with only one of those spent on discussing the many zeroes being offered to Inácio as a reward and how they'd known his lover. Lúcio met them at the Shigeru Awards and apparently gave them Inácio's contact details.
    The three clients wore encrypted avatars that masked their features, appearing as nothing but dark cloaks with plasma globes for heads. But out of recklessness or sheer confidence their voices weren't jumbled. They were all teens.
    "And that's it, Inácio. We want you to find everything you can about Gear5's policies." The taller avatar had an older but more casual tone. Advanced physics algorithms made the illusion dodge waiters, tourists and other rich media floating in the augmented reality.
    In the real world, Inácio sat at a round stone table close to the escalator leading to the avenue down below. Rush hour had passed, but the traffic systems were