Infoquake (55 page)

"Don't worry about me, Vigal," he said. "I can handle everything
the world throws at me. Just watch."

Night came to London. For Jara, it was not a falling but a terrible
rising, a mute upsurge of blackness that seeped from every pore of the
apartment walls and puddled along the floors until it soaked her to the
chest, constricting her breath.

Jara sat on her bedroom floor, Indian style, with her head cradled
in her arms. She found a comfortable rocking motion between her
haunches and the side of her knees, and tried to concentrate on that for
a while. Every few minutes, she would open her eyes to peer at the
window on the far wall, which was showing an exterior view of her
building. But that was too depressing. With every glance, corporate
office towers and tenements shrank more and more as their inhabitants
left work or went to sleep. A succumbing to the blackness, visceral
proof that the forces of Being were tottering on the brink of extinction.

Her old hive proctor had once told her that the universe was almost
entirely comprised of empty space. He brought Jara and her hivemates
into a green field SeeNaRee and used peppercorns and chestnuts to
approximate the position of the planets in the solar system, with the
sun represented by a rubber ball. The students were astounded to discover themselves standing hundreds of meters apart near their chosen
planet. So what's in the rest of the field? What fills up all that space? Jara
had asked. Nothing, the proctor had replied. Jara had been young and
foolish enough to look upon that lacuna as a void to be filled by good
deeds and great works. And the proctor had encouraged that passion.
He had fanned those flames and then sent her off to initiation believing
she had been the aggressor in their relationship, that she could set the
empty heavens ablaze.

She wondered what her proctor would have thought of Natch.

She wondered what advice her proctor would give her now.

A scant three weeks ago, Jara was bemoaning her fate and counting
the days until she could free herself of the Natch Personal Programming Fiefcorp's fetters. And now, as if responding to her silent command, events had conspired to spring her from her prison ten months
early. Natch had given the apprentices twenty-four hours to liquidate
shares and part ways, or continue their contracts with the new
Surina/Natch MultiReal Fiefcorp.

So why was she hesitating? Why was she huddled here on the floor
of her apartment, rocking back and forth and staring at inanimate
objects, instead of liquidating her shares? If she cashed out, she need
never see Natch again. She could just dissolve her apprenticeship and
walk away right now, ink the final period in this chapter of her life and
close the book on it.

She would have money. Jara fired a data agent at her Vault account
and studied the number that returned. When she added the liquidated
shares at current market value, she saw a nice round number with a
small army of zeros marching off the end. Jara began to dream up
things that these newfound credits could buy. A bigger apartment
closer to Horvil's end of London, one with real windows and a garden
that would put her meager daisy patch to shame. Stylish furniture to
spruce up that apartment. Lavish dinners, expensive champagne, cosmetic bio/logic programs, weeks and weeks of decadent fun on the
Sigh network. A trip to the neverending bacchanalia that was 49th
Heaven. She could polish off her sister's tuition payment for that useless degree in metal sculpture she was pursuing in Sudafrica. Or she
could simply stay put for a while, do nothing and decompress.

Then what?

Then she would have to look for work again. Perhaps a wise capitalman could stretch the money for five or six or even seven years, but
her investment skills were moderate at best. No matter how prudently
she acted, sooner or later she would find herself sitting across from
some arrogant fiefcorp master answering questions about bio/logic analysis and trying to explain the gap in her curriculum vitae.

Jara could hear her mother's accusation across thousands of kilometers: Why do you have to stick with biollogics? Why not become a politician or
a civil servant? Or maybe an artist like your sister?

No, Jara retorted silently. Bio/logics was all she knew, all she had
ever cared about, and she was simply too old to start fresh somewhere
else, to stumble through all the virginal mistakes you had to endure in
any new industry.

If only she had gotten a chance to deliver that presentation. If only
she had not been yanked away from her trial by fire before she had
tasted the flame.

Suddenly, Jara felt the full force of Natch's insidious offer bear
down upon her. Now she understood the feral smile that had taken
possession of the fiefcorp master's face last night. If she left the fiefcorp
now, she would have enough to be comfortable. Not rich, not poor, but
comfortable. Natch was asking her a question.

Do you want to settle for comfortable?

Jara pounded her open palm against the floor until the cool tile
stung her flesh. How could she not have seen? She should have known
that Natch's apparent act of generosity would eventually turn out to be
a referendum on him. He had offered her the choice of giving up, of
resigning herself to mediocrity and comfort; or of staying with the fiefcorp, of driving ahead, of tilting against self-loathing and dissatisfaction until they yielded or she died trying. There was no third path. To
continue in the fiefcorp world under a different corporate umbrella was
to become Natch's competitor, and Natch had ably demonstrated he
could vanquish any competition. But to quit was to admit she had
failed.

Why don't you reframe the question? asked an interior voice she recognized as Horvil. Poor, sweet Horvil, so untouched by the world's
misery. Don't accept the question on his terms. Ask your own question.

But Natch had cannily eliminated all other questions during their years in business together. One touch at a time, he had broken down
her defenses and seduced her into his ethos. Jara had become a slave to
Natch's worldview-and what was worse, she had willingly held out
her wrists for the cuffs.

I'm sorry, Horv, she thought, but I don't know how to reframe the question anymore.

I have no other answers to give.

Jara got up and straightened out her robe, as if wrinkles in the
fabric were a sign of poor character. She slunk into the breakfast nook
and ordered herself a pigeon's dinner: snap peas and steamed rice, raw
cauliflower, and water, cold and sharp as the edge of a knife. And as the
twenty-fourth hour crept by, unheralded, Jara sat and forked food into
her mouth, desperately trying to convince herself she was hungry.

For more comprehensive definitions and background articles on some
terms, consult the website at http://www.jump225.com.

TERM 49th Heaven aft Allahu Akbar Emirates Allowell analyst Andra Pradesh DEFINITION A decadent orbital colony, known for its loose morality; originally founded by one of the Three Jesuses as a religious retreat. One of the descriptive components of a program that help the Data Sea sort and catalog information. See also fore. A nation-state that once existed in what is now mostly Pharisee territory. "Allahu Akbar" means "God is great." An orbital colony, saved from extinction by High Executive Tul Jabbor. One of the standard positions in a fiefcorp. Fiefcorp analysts typically focus on areas such as marketing, channeling, finance and product development. A center of culture on the Indian subcontinent. Home to Creed Surina and the Gandhi University.
bio/logics black code bodhisattva capitalman carbonization economics ChaiQuoke channel channeler Cisco bars are categorized with the letters of the Roman alphabet (A to Z), and are largely indistinguishable to the naked eye. They interact with virtual code through holographic extensions which are only visible in MindSpace. The science of using programming code to extend the capabilities of the human body and mind. Malicious or harmful programs, usually designed and launched by seditious organizations. The spiritual leader of a creed. Most creed organizations are spearheaded by one individual bodhisattva. Some creeds are run by an elected body of major and minor bodhisattvas. Individual who raises start-up money for fief- corps. Following long tradition, the term is gender-neutral. A colloquial term for a type of economy where fiefcorps form quickly to serve a specific purpose, and then dissipate to make room for new ideas. A popular tea-flavored beverage. The process of marketing and selling products, usually to groups rather than individuals. A businessperson responsible for driving sales to specific markets. A major population center, known in ancient times as San Francisco.