Infoquake (52 page)

"Now, my engineers wanted me to stand up here and blather on
about the architecture of our program. All those MindSpace connections, all those complex mathematical formulas Margaret Surina has
worked so hard on for the last decade and a half. And my analysts, they
wanted me to talk about budgets and cost/benefit ratios and a lot of
nonsense I didn't understand.

"But I said-why don't we just show them a simple demonstration?"

The fiefcorp master blinked and summoned from the arena a
Kyushu Clubfoot bat and regulation baseball, just as he had done
twenty minutes earlier. He shifted his grip ever so slightly, trying to
find the perfect spot on the bat, the spot that his fingers melted into
like an extension of his own multi projected fingers. There would be
no opportunity for mistakes.

"There's an ancient legend about a player who could hit a baseball
wherever he pointed. He would point to a seat in the stands, wait for
the pitch, and then-wham! Knock the ball right there. They say he
was the greatest baseball player who ever lived. Well, today I'm going
to try to channel some of that magic for you."

Natch broke into a grin, stretched out his arm, and then whirled
around in a 360-degree arc. His pointing finger encompassed the
whole crowd.

He tossed the ball high into the air and swung the bat.

He activated Possibilities 1.0.

A resounding crack echoed through the arena.

Jara had found a comfortable position in the middle of the crowd
where she could get an objective reading of the audience. So far, the
speech she had written was performing as planned. Natch's folksy tone
of voice was soothing nerves and smoothing wrinkles, providing an
antidote to the poisonous invective the drudges had been spewing over
the past few days.

Her apprehension began when Natch did his spinning-andpointing routine. The script had been clear, hadn't it? Natch was supposed to point at an audience member-a single audience memberand start popping fly balls his way, one after another in quick succession, then repeat as necessary. What kind of fool stunt was the fiefcorp
master trying to pull?

Jara nearly collapsed in shock and horror when Natch swung the
bat.

There was just one ball flying through the air-and Natch was
making no motion to hit another.

Already Jara had begun a mental search for scapegoats. Was Natch
unable to activate the Possibilities program? Had Horvil and Quell
bungled the coding somehow and caused the MultiReal engine to
sputter? Did Benyamin's assembly-line shop miss a few connections?
Was this another of the Patel Brothers' perfidious acts of sabotage, or
the work of the black code flowing in Natch's veins?

And of all the hundreds of millions of people to choose from, why
had Natch decided to hit the ball directly to her?

Jara stretched out her hand and winced as the ball landed squarely
in her palm with a soft thud. She felt the light sting of horsehide on flesh. The analyst turned the ball over in her hand and brought it closer
to read the letters printed around the stitching.

The fiefcorp apprentice blinked, shook her head, and looked at her
empty palm. You're daydreaming, Jara, she told herself. There's no baseball in your hand.

But this was no daydream. The baseball had been there-and now
it wasn't.

A few seconds later, gasps of astonishment simultaneously burst
out of five hundred million spectators as comprehension slowly filtered
through their brains. Five hundred million stinging palms, five hundred million empty hands. A collaborative process.

Jara smiled in spite of herself.

"You have just experienced the awesome power of Possibilities,"
said Natch after the initial shock had worn off.

"Five hundred million swings of the bat. Five hundred million
possible catches. Five hundred million possible separate realities, all
created up here"-the fiefcorp master tapped his forehead-"and experienced out there." He gestured broadly to the audience.

"But we don't live in a world of multiple realities. MultiReal may
give you hundreds of millions of possibilities, but we still have to
make a choice. A single choice. And so the path I have chosen is-this
one."

Natch snapped his fingers, causing a spotlight to spear a tiny figure
far away in the crowd. A wave of applause came crashing towards Jara,
rippling out from the center of the spotlight until it enveloped the
entire audience. In the center of the spotlight stood a girl not more
than eight years old holding her father's hand, grinning adorably and
brandishing a MultiReal baseball in her elfin little fingers.

"Let the word impossible be permanently eliminated from our vocabulary!" cried Natch. "There are no more impossibilities! We have
entered a new Age of Possibilities-a new Age of MultiReal-and
from now on, the choices are yours.

"Towards Perfection, and I thank you for choosing to attend."

Robby Robby stuck to Horvil's side like a bad odor.

"They're going absolutely offline out there, Horv-o!" the channeler
squealed, his cube of hair bobbing enthusiastically to some triumphant
march playing inside his head. "My team is getting mobbed-it's like
being in the middle of a fucking orgy! Everyone wants to hear more
about MultiReal!"

"Yeah," said Horvil, his own face sporting a lopsided grin.
"Including me." Robby let out a laugh that continued much too long
to have any correlation to the wit of Horvil's comment. If Merri hadn't
shown up and ushered him out to join the sales blitzkrieg, he might
have kept going until his spleen ruptured.

The chaos continued for over an hour after Natch had vanished
from the stage. Horvil's cousins and uncles and cousins-of-cousins and
third-cousins-twice-removed-by-companionship multied in from
every crevice of the known universe to pat him on the back. Every
member of the extended family except for Aunt Berilla, whose hatred
for Natch apparently outranked her pride in Horvil and Benyamin.
Once the family had dissipated, friends and business acquaintances
that Horvil didn't even recognize began pressing in from all sides
asking for more details about MultiReal. The engineer did his best to
provide vague answers, especially when some of his "old hive buddies"
revealed that they had taken up the drudging profession.

Horvil shook off his pursuers and scanned the foot of the stage for
the rest of the Surina/Natch apprentices. They all seemed to be in the
same pickle. Jara was being mobbed by a horde of L-PRACG represen tatives trying to negotiate a bulk rate on the spot. Ben was happily
enfilading an entire squadron of creed devotees with upbeat chatter
about MultiReal. Quell was engaged in a vigorous argument with a
small pocket of Islanders, all tugging uncomfortably at their connectible collars. Merri was presumably still off crowd surfing with
Robby Robby. Only Natch and Serr Vigal had made a clean getaway.

Somewhere in the middle of the confusion, Horvil noticed a line of
white-robed Defense and Wellness Council officers moving silently out
the door, their guns safely holstered.

"Did you hear?" he said in a rush as Jara walked up to him. "Sen
Sivv Sor tracked down the little girl who caught the baseball. Apparently, the kid lives in a hive that just got its budget slashed by a bunch
of L-PRACG bureaucrats. Can you believe that luck? I wonder who
Natch wants as our next spokesperson. A stray kitten? A monk? Or
maybe a prostitute with a heart of gold who-"

Why am I laying it on so thick? thought Horvil.

Jara waited patiently for the engineer's shtick to ramble to a close.
"Good publicity is good publicity," she said softly, distantly.

Horvil smiled and nodded, then began inching away from the analyst towards an exit. He could ponder the mysteries of womanhood
another time. Right now, too many loose ends needed tying up. Like
who had ambushed Natch and shot him full of black code? What
kinds of surprises did the Patel Brothers have waiting for them later
tonight? And how in the world had Len Borda gotten mixed up in all
of this?

"I swear to you, Natch," said the man, "I had nothing to do with this.
I didn't hire anybody to ambush you in the street. I don't know any
group that runs around in the shadows wearing black robes attacking
people, and I wouldn't have anything to do with them if I did."

Natch's eyes blazed with doubt as he looked at Petrucio Patel.

He could only guess why Petrucio had agreed to come talk with
him here in the Surina Enterprise Facility, mere hours before the Patel
Brothers were due to take the stage at the Thassel Complex. Natch's
cold rage would have been evident from the instant Petrucio stepped
into the conference room and found himself enveloped in the
windswept Arctic tundra, a forbidden land with Lovecraftian menace
lurking over every hillside. If he didn't already know that his rival was
beyond such emotions, Natch might have guessed that Petrucio was
experiencing shame or guilt.

"I don't believe you," said Natch.

Petrucio burst into laughter. "You don't believe me! You think
Frederic and I hustled the fiefcorp off to Shenandoah and started
handing out robes and dartguns? Wait-you didn't see a short, fat one
in the group, did you? Maybe that was Frederic. He's quite the
marksman, you know."

Natch's face remained deadly serious, and Petrucio muzzled his
glee with great effort. He peered back over his shoulder at the 35meter dropoff just behind his heels. A long way to plunge just to see
if the SeeNaRee's automatic pain cutoff was operational. Petrucio
straightened his tie and brushed ice crystals off his jacket, gestures to
signal his command of the situation. "Natch, what would we gain by
hiring some goons to hit you with black code? It just doesn't make any
sense. How do I know you're not just making the whole thing up?"

"Don't be a fool, 'Trucio," snapped Natch irritably. "You've got the
whole MultiReal market to gain. Billions of customers and no competition."

"That's absolutely ludicrous. We're not just your competitors anymore, Natch-we're your licensees. If I hired someone to kill you, who
knows where control of MultiReal would end up?"

"It would stay with Margaret, who's scared for her life-"

-and wants nothing to do with us anymore. Follow the logic,
Natch! She'd just find someone else to partner with. Haven't you ever
heard the old adage about preferring the enemy you know to the enemy
you don't?"

"How pithy. You're the second person to tell me that this week."

"Obviously, you have a lot of enemies then. Listen, Natch, I'm not
going to sit here and pretend that the Patel Brothers are your friends.
I don't like you. I never have. But just because we're not your comrades
doesn't mean we don't know how to compete honorably."

Now it was Natch's turn to let out a hearty laugh. "What about
MemoryMiner 98c? Do you call that honorable?"

Patel sighed and stroked his elegantly waxed moustache in consternation. "I don't know if there's anything I could possibly say to
convince you that I had nothing to do with this so-called black code
incident. Okay, I'll admit, MemoryMiner 98c-that was a shitty thing
to do. But that was a long time ago, Natch. And what about all of
those dirty tricks you've played on us in the past couple years?
Remember DeMirage 24.5? NiteFocus 13, 34 and 48? Your reputation
in this business isn't exactly unblemished. Shall we count citations
from the Meme Cooperative and see which company is the cleanest?"