Multireal (63 page)

It took Natch almost two hours to weave through all the roadblocks Horvil had put in his path. But he could afford no more delays,
no more sidetracks. Every hour that Jara had administrative control of
MultiReal was an hour when Natch was vulnerable. Sooner or later, the
Defense and Wellness Council would realize that Natch had complied
with the Meme Cooperative's order and given Jara core access after all.
As soon as that happened, it was only a matter of time before they
coerced the program out of her hands-and then he really would be
irrelevant, just as Magan Kai Lee had said.

Natch found the selectors in the program that Quell had described
on the soccer field in Harper. Horvil's already demonstrated how easy it is
to select the options, he had said. The hard part is deciding which ones to
choose. But there was no more need for ambiguity, because Natch had
made his selection. No more sudden cutoffs or artificial limitations.

He made the switch. Unlimited choice cycles for all.

There was still one more step he needed to take, however. He
would not get caught in an endless loop of reprisal with Jara, her
erecting barriers one day, him disabling them the next. He would not
be forced to find detours around Horvil's roadblocks. Natch leaned
over the workbench and cast his mind out to the Data Sea. There were
a trillion caches of encrypted data out there, a trillion places to hide
programming code among all the connectible quarks in the world.
Natch picked a suitable cove almost at random. And then, trembling
all the while, he proceeded to transfer the MultiReal databases to the
new hidden location, petabyte by petabyte.

Jara had tried to hide the program from Natch, but Margaret had
assured him it could not be done. MultiReal is becoming apart of you, she
had said. And it was true: Natch could feel its presence now whenever
he closed his eyes. He could reach out and interface with the program
even outside of MindSpace. He could find MultiReal no matter where
it resided on the Data Sea.

But Jara couldn't.

The first rays of the dawning sun crept through the windows.
Somewhere in the kitchen, machinery began to whir. Natch, fiefcorp
master, entrepreneur, outcast, stood in the atrium, bloated with possibilities. He was the guardian and the keeper of MultiReal. And thanks
to the ghost of Margaret Surina, he was now the only person in the universe who could access it.

"I can't stay here," said Natch.

Brone regarded the entrepreneur behind a cold mask of wariness and
resignation. Something had changed in that prematurely aged face over the
past few days, ever since Loget began his fumbling attempts at tuning the
black code. The endgame was approaching, and they both knew it, though
Natch couldn't tell if Brone was expecting to win or lose this contest.

Meanwhile, progress on MultiReal had finally ground to a halt.
The Thasselians had not even bothered to gather in the atrium that
morning for a status report; instead most of them had bundled up and
gone outside to enjoy the freshly fallen snow. All except for Pierre
Loget and Billy Sterno, who were sitting at the conference table down
the hall, trying to solve the black code dilemma. And Brone, of course,
who preferred to observe the winter alone in his backroom office.

Natch pressed on. "What you're trying to do-multiple lives for
everybody. It's unworkable. I had my doubts about Possibilities 1.0, but
this ... The system can't handle it. I don't care how little bandwidth
consciousness takes up, the Data Sea won't be able to deal with that
much information. You'll crash the whole computational infrastructure."

"I don't believe that," said Brone. "I'm confident in my calculations."

"Then go ahead," said Natch, throwing his hands up in the air.
"Launch Possibilities 2.0, and see what happens. It'll be worse than the
Autonomous Revolt."

The bodhisattva's voice turned unctuous. "So you'd prefer to let Len
Borda get his claws on it and see what unending tyranny looks like?"

"You're trying to make this a black-and-white issue. It's not that
simple."

"Not that simple?" said Brone, his voice rising in mock disbelief.
He turned to the oddly dressed Texans on his office wall as if expecting
them to say a few words of solidarity. "It wasn't that simple when all
this started, Natch. You made it a black-and-white issue by stubbornly
refusing to explore the options. No compromises! That's been your
strategy since the very beginning. Well, now it's paid off, hasn't it? Here you are at last, no friends left, no allies, nowhere to turn! Tell me
this much. You never had any intention of staying here and joining my
Revolution of Selfishness, did you? You would have bolted the instant
we finished tuning that black code. Or would you have taken advantage of our programming skills first, waited until Possibilities 2.0 was
done, and then run away?" Brone leaned back in his chair, angrily
opening and closing the middle desk drawer for no apparent reason.
"Loget said this would happen. He told me you'd never cooperate with
us, no matter how much was at stake. But I was too trusting."

"Too trusting?" said Natch with a guffaw. "Too trusting? Talk about
false pretenses-you never intended to fix that black code. You
planned on leaving me like this all along, didn't you?" He held up his
right arm, now twitching as frequently and painfully as the left.

"No," insisted Brone, placing his good hand over his heart in a
show of sincerity. "I'm being on the level with you. I swear, Pierre has
been trying to figure out what's wrong."

Natch felt a sudden rush of nausea, though whether it was precipitated by the black code or Brone's lies he didn't know. "You haven't
been on the level since the beginning," he sneered. "If you wanted to
work with me, then why didn't you just approach me upfront? Why
the deceit? Why the-"

"Oh, please!" The bodhisattva waved away Natch's objections with
a swipe of his prosthetic hand. "I did approach you. Have you forgotten
that I gave you money? It was only after you turned up your nose at
me-only after you made it clear you were planning to walk straight
into Len Borda's clutches with MultiReal in hand-only then that I
took the recourse of black code. I gave you the benefit of the doubt,
Natch! And did you deserve it? You're the man who lied and cheated
his way up the Primo's charts, after all. The man without moral scruples, the man known for his inability to work with anyone. And you say
I should have just taken your word? You think I should have just come
to you without taking any precautions?"

Natch didn't know why he was still standing in his old hivemate's
office taking such abuse. Better to leave now, better to run out that door
into the Chicago winter while his anger was fresh. What could Brone do
besides heap scorn upon him as he walked away? Yet Natch's feet felt
rooted to the spot; he could not leave, not quite yet. "If you had so little
faith in me," he said, "then why did you bother? I wasn't the only one
who had core access to MultiReal. You could have gone to-" Natch
stopped short as he felt a horrible truth stab him in the gut. His legs
gave way, and he collapsed into a chair near the door. "For process'
preservation," he said under his breath. "You-you murdered Margaret."

The room grew deathly quiet. Brone stood up from his chair and
turned his back on Natch. Then he walked slowly to the window and
folded his arms across his chest. Outside, a flotilla of dark clouds was
threatening to blanket the city with more snow. A few of the devotees
ambled by, muttering angry and unintelligible words at one another.

"I admit I wanted to murder her," said Brone after a long and tense
silence. "I even admit that I threatened her. But it's not so easy to kill
someone in cold blood, Natch. You should try it sometime. Would I
have gone through with it? I honestly don't know."

"What do you mean? If you didn't kill her, then who did?"

"Nobody," replied the bodhisattva, his voice ashen. "Margaret
Surina committed suicide."

Something vile wriggled its way inside Natch's belly. He remembered his last conversation with Margaret atop the Revelation Spire. She'd
been in the last stages of paranoia, clutching a dartgun, barely able to recognize Natch. Barely able to recognize Quell. "You expect me to believe
that?" said Natch in a hollow croak. "After all the lies you've told?"

Brone shrugged, conceding the point. "I'm sorry you don't believe
me. But the truth is, your business partner killed herself. I watched her
do it. I sat in that wretched Spire of hers and laid out my vision for
Possibilities 2.0, one bodhisattva to another. I told her of my plans for
the Revolution of Selfishness, just like I told you." The bodhisattva slumped forward with his palms on the windowsill. "I don't know if
she even understood what I was saying. You saw how she was behaving
toward the end. You were in her office right before me. I offered Margaret Surina a chance to join the Revolution, and instead she chose suicide, with her own black code. It was ... horrible. It wasn't a quick
death." He shuddered. "Undoubtedly Len Borda has already figured
this out, and is just trying to decide who to pin the blame on.

"But I already had a backup plan, Natch, and that was you. So I
waited. Because I knew it was only a matter of time before you alienated everyone and exhausted every resource. Regardless of what the
Prime Committee decided, I knew you'd never hand them MultiReal.
I knew that eventually you would wind up alone with Council dartguns bearing down on you, with nowhere else to turn. So when the
infoquake struck at the Tul Jabbor Complex, I was ready. I swooped
down, and I saved you.

"Not only did I save you, Natch-I brought you here to Old
Chicago, and I gave you everything you'd always wanted. Unlimited
resources. A partnership. The greatest technological challenge in the
history of programming, and all the time in the world to master it."
Brone took a deep breath, looking miserable and defeated. "I'm not
sure what else you expect me to do."

"I already told you," said Natch. "Fix that black code. Fix it, or get
rid of it."

There was no noise but the creaking of the old hotel for several
minutes. Natch could see Brone's reflection in the window. The bodhisattva's eyes were dead, hollow, unmanned.

Finally, Brone spoke. "My black code isn't causing those tremors and
blackouts, Natch," he said. "I don't know what is. And that's the truth."

Natch snorted. "I don't believe you."

Another pause. The storm clouds that had been threatening snow
began to deliver on their promise.

"Why should I help you, Natch?" said Brone, tired. "You're already planning to leave. This is Chicago, the city of barter. And yet
you offer me nothing in exchange."

Natch picked himself up from the chair and thrust his hands in his
pockets. "Why should I barter?" he said. "I've got core access to MultiReal. I don't have to offer anything in return. You've got one more day.
Fix the black code, or get rid of it-and then I'll decide if I'm going to
stay. It's the only chance you've got."

Brone did not turn around. "So be it," he said.

The graveyard of midnight. Complete silence throughout the hotel.

Natch bolted out of bed and threw on his clothes. He dashed
through the hallway and down the stairs. There were no revelers in the
atrium tonight, no wandering insomniacs, nobody picking over leftovers from the kitchen. Through the windows, Old Chicago had
nothing to offer but the wind and the sepulchral snow. Natch picked
a devotee's platform at random, lowered it, and hopped on.

He knew what he had to do.

Natch stood at the workbench and waved his left hand. A shimmering bubble the size of a coin appeared in the air before him. The
bubble quickly expanded until it encompassed most of the workbench,
until it enveloped him entirely and blanketed the rest of the world in
a translucent film.

MindSpace. An empty canvas, a barren universe. Anything was
possible here.