Infoquake (45 page)

"But I don't remember any of that happening."

"No. You wouldn't. Not without MultiReal."

Benyamin and Jara sank down into the grass with Horvil, overcome by the dizzying spiral of probabilities and possibilities. Horvil
wasn't doing much better. Questions were clambering to the forefront
of the engineer's head, but no answers accompanied them. No bio/logic
program could conceivably turn the concept of cause-and-effect on its
head like that-and yet, somehow, MultiReal just did.

Horvil heard the echo of Margaret Surina's words, spoken three and
a half days ago, an incomprehensible lifetime in the past: The everchanging flux of MultiReal will become reality. MultiReal will free us from
the tyranny of cause and effect itself.

He thought of the crack team of security guards standing guard
just outside, and the multitudes of armed troops patrolling the premises. It seemed like a pitifully small amount of protection. Who knew
what MultiReal was really capable of? Who knew what lengths the
Defense and Wellness Council would go to in order to possess it?
Horvil tried to imagine working under this pressure every day: furtive looks over your shoulder, armed backup whenever you flipped on your
workbench. He felt claustrophobic from working in Andra Pradesh for
a single evening. Quell and Margaret Surina had been doing this for
sixteen years.

Merri's tired voice echoed from the dugout. "I think we've found
our demonstration." Jara whipped her head around hawklike towards
the channel manager, thought for a moment, and then nodded with
mute agreement.

Suddenly, Benyamin perked up. "Wait a minute!" he cried. "If we
already have the demonstration we're going to use on Tuesday, then we
don't have to worry about the assembly-line shop, do we?"

Quell shook his head, causing the young apprentice's demeanor to
cloud over once again. "It's a collaborative process, remember? The
MultiReal engine Margaret and I put together won't work in front of
a big crowd-at least not yet. We need a good predictive engine like
Horvil's Probabilities ROD to sort through all the permutations."

Ben shifted uncomfortably. "A collaborative process running
among hundreds of millions of people-that's gonna take a heck of a
lot of computing power, isn't it?"

"Oh fuck," moaned Jara, burying her head in her hands. "Infoquakes."

Rivers of fear coursed through Horvil's skull. He thought back to
the disturbance at Margaret Surina's speech, those sickening few minutes of paralysis and vertigo. Computational vortexes, communication
breakdowns.

The Islander's countenance turned predatory. "That's exactly what
Len Borda wants you to think," he said.

"And what ... what if he's right?" said Merri quietly from her
alcove in the dugout. The trembling had started up in her arms again,
but Horvil wasn't sure if it was a lingering effect of the teleportation
or a new surge of fear.

"Margaret Surina is not an imbecile. In all the time she worked on MultiReal, don't you think this problem occurred to her?" Quell's face
had turned blood-red with rage, and Horvil could see his fists
clenching on the bat until it vanished. "People have been talking about
computational resource limitations for years now, long before anybody
ever heard of infoquakes. This is not new. Are there risks with MultiReal? Of course. But give us a few more years to optimize the code, and
we can limit the risks. In a rational and responsible society, there's no
reason why this program shouldn't see the light of day."

A cold wind blew through the bleachers and made a whistling
sound off the metal railings. Suddenly, his tirade over, the Islander
seemed to have aged a dozen years. "You think you see all the possibilities now?" said Quell. "Think again. There are possibilities that will
scare the living wits out of you. Possibilities you haven't even dreamed
of."

Robby Robby's grin began just below one ear and undertook an impossibly long journey down his chin to reach the other. Merri could find
no evidence a single granule of stubble had ever blemished that slick
face.

"You're looking particularly good this morning, Merri," said the
channeler, his voice lightly greased.

The fiefcorp apprentice held back a smirk. She didn't take Robby's
Casanova act seriously; she had seen enough of the man's tactics to
know it was just part of his sales patter. Robby Robby never walked
down any path unless he was convinced a pile of credits awaited him
at the end. Still, Merri wondered if her fiercely protective companion-her fiercely protective female companion-would regard his
charade quite so casually. "So we're here to discuss the market survey,"
she said in a no-nonsense tone.

"The market survey, yes." Robby bobbed his head, which Barb-urShop 125k had coifed with a perfect cube of hair. Behind him sat his
entire troupe of two dozen channelers, fresh young faces either
untouched by experience or polished smooth by it. All had adapted the
same ridiculous cube-haired 'do as Robby. "The folks we're contacting
are confused, Merri. They've all heard of the Surina/Natch MultiReal
Fiefcorp-we've got huge amounts of name recognition. And of course,
after that mess with the infoquake, who hasn't heard about MultiReal
by now?" Robby's channelers gave sanctimonious nods of agreement
up and down the conference table.

Merri smiled. "So is there a problem?" she asked. Of course there
was a problem.

"Well, when our pollsters started asking folks if they were interested in MultiReal, almost 95 percent said yes. Great numbers across the spectrum! But when we asked people whether they thought MultiReal was something they might actually buy ... What was that
number again, Friz?"

"17.3 percent," replied Frizitz Quo, a perky Asian channeler sitting to Robby's right.

The grin on Robby's face narrowed a few microns. "17.3 percent
interested in buying MultiReal. I don't need to tell ya, Merri-that's
not an encouraging number! Nobody knows what this MultiReal stuff
is for."

Merri gave a rueful sigh and placed her hands palm up on the table
in a gesture of sincerity. During the past few months, she had learned
that body language was crucial in the channeling business. "This is a
brand-new industry, Robby," she said. "The sky's the limit. We've
barely even started counting the possibilities." She thought back to
Quell's demonstration yesterday and tried to use deductive reasoning
to figure out more practical uses for MultiReal. But as usual, her mind
came up blank. "Baseball, for one."

"Yes, baseball." Robby nodded slowly in an unconvincing imitation of agreement. To a pathological yes-man like Robby, the only way
to express a differing opinion was to agree less vehemently. "So that
leads us to your script. This baseball thing-is Natch going to be able
to do that at the demonstration? Is it possible?"

"It is," said Merri firmly. "I've seen it."

Robby scratched his head as he pored over the latest draft of Jara's
speech, which he had projected onto a viewscreen at one end of the
table. Even with the font size bumped up to drudge-headline proportions, the entire script still fit easily within two screenlengths. Robby
made a show of flipping through the presentation again, pretending to
read it carefully when Merri knew he was really holding a ConfidentialWhisper conversation with his staff - and it was a heated conversation, if the worried grooves on the channelers' foreheads were any indication.

"You know, Merri, I've been working with Natch for a few years
now," said Robby. "I know this guy pretty well. I've heard what he has
to say about the Surinas and their creed babble, and it ain't pretty."

Creed babble? Merri bristled at the slick channeler's characterization, and immediately began rallying a passionate defense of creedism
inside her head. Then she imagined how the Bodhisattva of Creed
Objectivv would respond-we often calla thing babble that we cannot ourselves understand, he would say with a good-natured shrug-and she
simmered down.

"The point is," Robby was saying, "our man Natch is cynical to the
core. Are you sure he's okay with this?"

"I've given you access to a whole library of detailed analysis,
Robby. You've got an entire history of the Surina name, a list of the
Surina clan's accomplishments and inventions, and all those stellar
Primo's ratings Natch has been accumulating over the past few years.
Robby, this is going to be one of the biggest technological advances
the world has ever seen, and Natch wants you with us on the ground
floor! Trust me, he can definitely do everything in that script." Merri
paused to take a deep breath. She couldn't remember the last time she
had been so agitated.

"I'm curious, though," Robby mused with a sly look. "If Natch is
so committed to this Surina stuff, how come he didn't show up for the
meeting today?" He gestured ever so slightly towards the empty chair
at the opposite end of the table.

Merri had been wondering precisely the same thing, but she was
not about to tell Robby that. She felt the keen temptation to lie, to slip
free from the bonds of her Objectivv oath, if only just this once. Natch
had some last-minute coding to finish up. He's doing an interview with Mah
Lo Vertiginous right now. He's meeting with Margaret across the courtyard in
the Surina residence. Who would be the wiser?

The depths of this game had suddenly become unfathomable to
Merri. Even with company allies in a private meeting, messages were being broadcast, challenges made, gauntlets thrown down. What place
did Absolute Truth have in this cesspool?

Instead of lying, Merri found herself plastering a WinningGrin 44
on her face. "Robby, you know what a perfectionist Natch is," she said.
"How he wants everything done his way, down to the last detail. You
know he's going to insist that every last connection strand is absolutely
perfect before he goes out on that stage."

Again the placating smile, the fake burst of comprehension. "No
doubt!" Robby ejaculated. "So that just leaves us with one more topic."

"Yes?"

"The Council." Merri quickly tossed a PokerFace 83.4b atop the
WinningGrin. "They've been-heck, Merri, they've been harassing
my boys and girls here." He tilted his head in the direction of his "boys
and girls," who all murmured their assent.

Suddenly, Merri felt very tired. "What do you mean by
`harassing'?"

"It's just your typical Defense and Wellness Council aggravation,"
said Robby, sweeping his concerns over one shoulder with a long, bony
hand. "Requests to see our permits, people following us around, that
kind of thing. Friz here got cited for `walking too close to a tube track'
the other day." Friz, the junior channeler, jutted his bottom lip forward
and gave his best hangdog look. "Nothing we can't handle, of course.
But you know, if we have another one of those infoquakes ..."

Robby Robby let the sentence drift off, but Merri was all too ready
to complete it. If we have another one of those infoquakes, the Council might
swoop down and take MultiRealfrom us by force. The public might get frightened away from the product altogether. The drudges might start calling for
Natch's head. Any way you look at it, it's entirely possible none of us will make
a single credit off this crazy enterprise.

Again, Merri found herself stretching the bonds of her oath,
reaching for the sweet opiate of prevarication. She adopted her most
confident tone of voice and enhanced it with bio/logics. "Robby, nobody knows what's really going to happen out there tomorrowmuch less next week or next month! Your team is going to be put on
the spot, and you might have to do a lot of improvising. You'll probably have to endure a few more of those bogus citations from the
Council. But Natch is utterly committed to this product. He hasn't
just staked our careers on it; he's staked his own. And in the years
you've known him, has Natch ever steered you wrong?"

The channeler seemed to be weighing his options for a few excruciating seconds. His eyes flickered on the black-and-white swirl of the
Objectivv pin riding her left breast. Finally, Robby dispensed one of
his Cheshire cat smiles. The same smile quickly rippled down the table
until all two dozen channelers were wearing it. "I gotcha, Merri," said
Robby. "You're absolutely right. If this is what Natch wants, this is
what Natch gets. We trust in Natch."

I wish I did, Merri said to herself glumly.