Geosynchron (62 page)

"You don't know that any of that's going to happen!" scoffs Horvil.
"You're just throwing out doomsday scenarios."

"Easy to do when it's doomsday." Natch sighs, wishing he could
see his old friend again, even if just for a moment. It's difficult to pic ture the outside world from this blackness. And if he does follow
through ... then it's likely he will never see Horvil ever again.
"Horvil, this is the dilemma Margaret Surina faced. This is the
dilemma she couldn't-or wouldn't-solve. If I activate the failsafe,
hundreds of thousands could die. If I don't activate the failsafe, millions or billions could die."

"But you'll die too."

"I don't exist."

He can practically hear the frustrated noises coming from Horvil's
larynx; he can almost see the engineer's gritted teeth. "You don't exist?
What the fuck is that supposed to mean? You exist to me! You exist to
Serr Vigal! You exist to all those people on 49th Heaven you freed from
Chomp addiction. For process' preservation, we just found you. We're
not going to lose you again so quickly."

"That's all beside the point," says Natch. "The only relevant question is, will I save more lives if I activate the failsafe or if I do nothing?
The answer seems pretty clear to me."

"I don't understand why you have to take responsibility for Margaret's mess. That's just your ego talking. You didn't create MultiReal.
And you're not the one throwing the program out on the Data Sea
unfinished. It's Brone who's doing that."

"But I created him. I made him the person he is today."

"Why do you say that?"

"The bear, Horvil. I led the bear straight to him during initiation.
It was my fault."

The engineer is clearly taken aback by this sudden admission of
guilt after all the years of ambiguity. But that doesn't mean he's about
to stop trying to change his old hivemate's mind. "Natch, that was
years ago. Whether you're responsible for Brone's scars or not, that
doesn't change the question of who's responsible for this debacle."

I am, thinks the entrepreneur, deciding not to say it out loud.
Maybe not wholly responsible, but I bear a large part of the blame. I could have compromised with Magan Kai Lee months ago. I could have agreed to work
with the Council, to slow things down.

"If you're not responsible," continues Horvil, "then why should
you be the one who suffers for it? If the failsafe needs to be activated,
let someone else do it."

"Like who?"

"Magan Kai Lee. Khann Frejohr. The Blade. One of those do-
gooders from Creed Elan. Shit, Magan has legions of soldiers out there
fresh from the battlefield. I bet he'd get a hundred volunteers for a suicide mission in a heartbeat."

Natch tries to shake his head at his old friend's obstinacy. "So let's
say one of them does volunteer. Any idea how you would track down
the failsafe code in my OCHREs and transplant it to someone else's
system in the next half hour?" Silence. "I'm sorry, Horv. We have no
idea where the failsafe activation code is or how it works, and there just
isn't time to figure it out. I don't care if this is virtual instantaneous
conversation, programming still happens in real time."

"Now you're just being pessimistic," replies Horvil.

Natch laughs. "Maybe."

"Listen, don't give up hope. Me and Quell, we'll get you out of
there. He's plugging away at this bio/logic loopback you're in as fast
as he can. He got a communication channel in here, it's only a matter
of time before the whole thing unravels. We'll crack the code, and then
you can-you can, fuck, I don't know. Tackle Brone or something.
We'll figure it out. Just don't give up hope."

"So explain this to me again?" says Jara. "You're ... where?"

Natch does his best to sum up the situation, yet again, to his former
analyst, now the master of the fiefcorp he abandoned. Brone's black code
of nothingness and Quell's tunnel through it. Margaret's failsafe.

"I suppose it makes sense," says the fiefcorp master after a moment's thought. "It's just strange. We're sitting here in Manila
watching you on a viewscreen while Brone puts on his little circus.
Hard to wrap my head around the idea that we can see what you're
doing, but you can't."

The thought makes Natch more than a little uncomfortable as
well. "What am I doing?"

"Just sitting there, as far as I can tell. They've got you propped up
on a chair. Every few minutes, Pierre Loget comes over and tips a little
bit of water down your throat. It's creepy."

"And Brone's `little circus'? How's that going?"

A sigh of exasperation. "Oh, pretty much about how you'd expect.
It was compelling when he started, but then he made this long-winded
speech about the end of history and the power of the common citizen.
Now he's got John Ridglee, Sen Siv Sort, and Mah Lo Vertiginous
standing up to make these pompous rebuttals. Brone's trying to pretend he's being judicious and reasonable, but the consensus on the
Data Sea is that he's already made up his mind. If he had any sense,
he'd just go ahead and release the fucking program already. An hour of
boring debate isn't going to change anyone's mind."

Natch tries to imagine the scene, but this may be one instance
where he's glad to be cut off from his surroundings. He doubts that the
drudges really comprehend the enormity of the situation; they're just
looking to milk the free publicity. As for Brone, he clearly just likes
the sound of his own voice, something Natch has known since initiation. But why shouldn't Brone preen in the spotlight for an hour? What
does he have to fear? Magan Kai Lee can't storm the Complex or lob a
missile on it. Borda has stepped down. And Natch, as far as he knows,
is powerless. There's no reason in the world that Brone shouldn't make
a grand production out of this. Whether MultiReal is released or not,
he'll never get another opportunity like it.

"Listen, Jara," says Natch, "I ... I never thanked you."

"Thanked me for what?"

"For saving my life."

The fiefcorp master seems surprised and not a little suspicious.
"When did I do that?"

"A couple of months ago. When you convinced Petrucio to limit
the number of MultiReal choice cycles any one person could use in a
day. That saved my life at the Tul Jabbor Complex. If I hadn't run out
of choice cycles when Petrucio was trying to shoot me with black code,
then he would have missed. He would have never hit me with the
MultiReal-D code-which ended up saving my life in Old Chicago."

Natch can practically see the stubborn frown on Jara's face. "You're
buttering me up for something," she grumbles. "What is it?"

He laughs. "What was that line from Phantom Distortions? `You can
engrave your apologies on my tombstone'? ... No, Jara, I really did
just want to thank you. But come to think of it, there is something I
want from you too."

"Which is?"

"Your opinion. About what I should do."

The connection goes quiet, and for the hundredth time Natch
wishes he could see the look on the other conversant's face. He can conjecture, but it's impossible to know for sure whether Jara is angry, confused, irritated, amused, or unsure. "Horvil explained the situation
about the failsafe to you, right?" says Natch.

"Vigal did," she replies. "Horvil and Quell are too busy trying to
get you out of there."

"So what's wrong?"

A pause to carefully consider phraseology. "I just can't believe you
really want my opinion. You never wanted it before."

"That's not true! I always valued your opinion, Jara, or I wouldn't
have asked for it. That's why I brought you on to the fiefcorp in the
first place. Because you've never tried to sugarcoat the truth. Even
when I was ... emotionally manipulating you ... I could always count on you for the unvarnished truth. You have no idea how important that is. Take it from me-if you intend to run a successful fiefcorp
after all this is over, you're going to need honest feedback, even if it
hits you like a slap in the face."

Jara sniffs amusedly. "Oh, don't worry about that. I've got someone
who has no problem speaking truth to power. Assuming there are still
fiefcorps after this is all over with."

"Who?"

"Benyamin," says Jara. "He's much more of a pain to me than I ever
was to you, but he'll make a great number two once we're free and clear
of this MultiReal business.... Listen, we can talk about fiefcorps some
other time. You wanted my opinion about what to do."

Natch tries to nod, fails. "Yes. It's an ethical question, I think."

Another laugh. "Merri's the expert in ethics, not me."

"That doesn't mean I don't want your opinion. Look, it's a simple
question. Should I activate Margaret's failsafe and effectively destroy
MultiReal-or should I do nothing and let Brone release MultiReal?"

"This isn't an ethical question at all," says Jara. "It's a math
problem. Will you save more lives if you activate the failsafe or if you
do nothing?"

"If I activate the failsafe, Horvil thinks the death toll could be in
the tens of thousands. Missing memories, chaos, malfunctioning programming. Worst-case scenario, that number could be off by a couple
of decimal points. But if I let Brone release the program unimpeded
... there's a chance the entire computational system could collapse.
How many could die then? Absolutely no way to know. Tens of millions? Billions?"

"The biggest hole in your calculations is you're assuming the
public will be fanatically interested. What if Brone releases MultiReal
and nobody cares?"

"With all the buildup surrounding the program over the past few
months," says Natch, "I don't think that's likely."

"Maybe people will actually listen to the Council and stay away
from MultiReal."

"Given all the mistrust Len Borda sowed in the public for all those
decades, I wouldn't count on that happening either. You know that
Brone is going to get on the Data Sea and tell everyone to ignore the
Council's propaganda. He doesn't have to convince everybody for this
to turn into a catastrophe. You heard Rey Gonerev's numbers. If just
the hard-code Thasselian devotees out there ignore the Council's warnings, that could crash the computational infrastructure." He begins
calculating the odds in his head again and slips off into completely
unverified conjecture.

"How confident are you of all this?" asks Jara. "Give me a percentage."

The entrepreneur tries to factor all his suppositions and suspicions
down to a single integer. "I'd say I'm about seventy percent certain."

"There's something else to consider." Jara pauses, clearly trying to
formulate a question in her head. "Let's say Possibilities 2.0 is as
groundbreaking and revolutionary as Brone says it is. Let's say the program frees us all from the tyranny of cause and effect and throws off
the yoke of the Council forever, or whatever he's claiming. How many
lives is that worth?"

Natch does not hesitate. "None."

"No, it's not that easy. Think about this for a second. Everyone
from here to Furtoid with the power of Possibilities 2.0, in a world
without cause and effect. We're talking about the potential to end war,
the potential to end murder-for process' preservation, this could end
conflict altogether. Don't you think that would save billions of lives in
the long run?"

"Come on, Jara," scoffs Natch. "A world completely free of death
and conflict? You know human nature as well as I do. It's never, ever
going to happen. Conflict is the engine that powers the universe. You
can't get rid of it. If the human race is headed for a future without
cause and effect, it's not going to happen overnight just by releasing a bio/logic program. It's going to be a long, hard slog, century after century, one day at a time."

Jara is clearly taken aback by this answer. "So you wouldn't let
anyone die for that?"

"Not a single life. Not even-not even the lowest wretch in the
sewers of 49th Heaven. I wouldn't sacrifice a single person for Possibilities 2.0, even if it's everything that Brone claims it is.,,

"But you would sacrifice yourself to stop it."

"That's different."

There's a long pause as Jara tries to take in Natch's point of view.
He can tell that she doesn't quite understand his perspective, but she
respects it.

"Listen, Jara," continues Natch, "you can't look at this like a math
problem. You can't look at it in the abstract. We're talking about
human beings."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this from you, of all people. Of course
you have to look at it in the abstract. There's no way to make decisions
involving billions of people on an individual basis."

"But I do. I can. I feel every single one of those people, like a
weight around my neck."

"Don't try to pretend that this is personal for you," says the fiefcorp master, her voice suddenly tinged with bitterness. "Because it's
not. Not like it is for me."

"You're talking about ... you and Horvil."