Interface (16 page)

"How did you think that you looked?"

"Not very good. Actually I was kind of shocked by how strange I l
ooked."

"Your eyes looked as if they were bulging out of your head, did th
ey not?"

"Exactly. How did you know that?"
"The gamma curve of a video camera determines its response to
light," Cy Ogle said. "If the curve were straight, then dim things
would look dim and bright things bright, just as they do in reality,
and as they do, more or less, on any decent film stock. But because
the gamma curve is not a straight line, dim things tend to look
muddy and black, while bright things tend to glare and overload; the only things that look halfway proper are in the middle. Now,
you have dark eyes, and they are deeply set in your skull, so that
they tend to be in shadow. By contrast, the whites of your eyes are
intensely bright. If you knew what I know, you would keep them
fixed straight ahead in their sockets when you were on television, exposing as little of the white as possible. But because you are not
versed in this subject, you swivel your eyes around as you look at
different things, and when you do, the white part predominates and
it jumps out of the screen because of the gamma curve; your eyes
look like bulging white globes set in a muddy dark background." "Is this the kind of thing that you teach to politicians?"
"Just a sample," Ogle said.
"Gee, it's really a shame that-"
"That our political system revolves around such trivial matters.
Aaron, please do not waste my time and yours by voicing the
obvious."
"Sorry."

"That's how it is, and how it will be until high-definition
television becomes the norm."
"Then what will happen?"

"All of the politicians currently in power will be voted out of
office and we will have a completely new power structure. Because
high-definition television has
 
a flat gamma curve and higher
resolution, and people who look good on today's television will
look bad on HDTV and voters will respond accordingly. Their
oversized pores will be visible, the red veins in their noses from
drinking too much, the artificiality of their TV-friendly hairdos will
make them all look, on HDTV, like country-and-western singers.
A new generation of politicians will take over and they will all look
like movie stars, because HDTV will be a great deal like film, and m
ovie stars know how to look good on film."

"Does any of this relate to me, or are we just speaking in the a
bstract here?" Aaron said.

Cy Ogle rotated his beer back and forth between the palms of his h
ands, as if attempting to start a fire on the tabletop.

"A human being cannot withstand the scrutiny given to a
presidential candidate, any more than a human being could survive th
e medieval trial by fire, in which he was forced to walk barefoot ac
ross hot coals."

"But people did survive those trials, didn't they?" "Ever taken a fire-walking course?"
"No. But I've heard they exist."

"Anyone can walk barefoot across hot coals. But you have to do it
right. There's a trick to it. If you know the trick, you can survive. N
ow, back in medieval times, some people got lucky and happened to
stumble across this trick, and they made it. The rest failed. It was th
erefore an essentially random process, hence irrational. But if they h
ad had fire-walking seminars in the Dark Ages, anyone could have d
one it.

"The same thing used to apply to the modern trial by ordeal. Abe Li
ncoln would never have been elected to anything, because ran
dom genetic chance gave him a user-unfriendly face. But as a rational person I can learn all of the little tricks and teach them to m
y friends, eliminating the random, hence irrational elements from th
e modern trial by ordeal. I have the knowledge to guide a
presidential candidate through his trial in this, the Age of Scrutiny."
"What kinds of tricks?"

Ogle shrugged. "Some are very simple. Don't wear herringbone patterns on TV because they will create a moire pattern. But some of
them are - and I do not use this term in a pejorative sense - fi
endish. That's where you come in."

"I gather you want to use the IMIPREM to monitor people's re
actions to political debates, or something."

"Don't ever say IMIPREM again. I hate the word," Ogle said. "I
t's a clumsy high-tech name. It's the worst trade name ever
invented. Right now, your device is going to get subsumed into a
larger group of technologies. It is going to become one very
important element in a large and extremely complicated
technological system. The name for that system is PIPER. Which
stands for poll instantaneous processing, evaluation, and response."

"You asked me if I could make it small enough to be portable,"
Aaron said.

"That I did."

"You want to have your poll subjects carry these things around
with them. You want to monitor their reactions to the campaign
in real time. That's
poll instantaneous processing evaluation.
And
evaluation
must mean that you're going to feed all the data into your
computers so that you can analyze and evaluate the incoming data
as fast as it arrives."

"You are very perceptive," Ogle said.

"How about
response?"

"How about it?"

"I understand the instantaneous processing and evaluation. But
how can you
respond
to a poll instantaneously?"

"As I said," Ogle said, "your device will be only a small part of
a large system."

"I understand that. But I'm asking-"

"Similarly, you, Aaron, will be only a small part of a large
organization. Not the leading man anymore. A small price to pay
for financial security, wouldn't you agree?"

"Yes, I'm just wondering-"

"One of your responsibilities, as a part of this large team, will be
to use your head a little bit and not try to delve into matters that are
remote from your own little sphere. You can't understand
everything."

"Oh."

"Only I, Cyrus Rutherford Ogle, can understand everything."

"I was just asking out of pure curiosity."

"What it this the Age of, Aaron?"

"Scrutiny."

"Guess what is going to happen to you and your company when
you become part of the PIPER project?"

"We will get scrutinized."

"Guess what is going to happen, then, if you insist on asking infelicitous questions, out of pure curiosity?"

"I will get roasted alive on hot coals."

"Along with me and everyone else involved in PIPER, inc
luding my clients."

"Say no more, I will be discreet."

"Good."

"I'm just trying to figure out what my responsibilities will be in P
IPER."

"To work with our chip people and miniaturize your device. I have already made an appointment with some clever fellows at Pa
cific Netware, up in Marin County. We will go up there to
morrow and meet with them, like medieval monks gathering in a
remote orchard, and we will build high the flame of, quote, rationality, unquote."

9

Tuscola in late morning was silent except for the whistles of
hundred-car freight trains thundering north-south along the Illinois
Central or east-west on the B&O, and the occasional distant
blatting noise of a truck downshifting on the highway. Cold winter
sunlight
 
was
  
slanting
 
in
 
through
  
the
 
beveled-glass
 
windows
surrounding the front door, forming a spray of little rainbows on
the aging shag carpet that covered the living room floor. Cozzanos
had always placed a premium on warmth over exquisite taste and
so they had shag carpet. William A. Cozzano had known for a long
time that there was good oak flooring under there and had been
resolving, for the last twenty years, to peel up the carpet and sand
it and refinish it. It was one of those things that would wait until his
retirement.

But he wouldn't be able to do it now. There was no way he
could handle a big floor sander. He would have to pay someone to
do the work for him. He had always done his own work on his own
house, even when it meant waiting until he had a free weekend.

The street was made of red brick. So was the sidewalk. The
bricks were heaved up from place to place by the roots of the big
oak trees in the front yard. In other spots they were gradually
sinking into the lawn. Kids from the afternoon kindergarten class
were ambling down the sidewalk on their way to the Everett
Dirksen Elementary School two blocks away, which had been
retrofitted into a former hospital. They took no notice of the house.
Older kids, who could read the words THE CozzanoS on the
little sign hanging on the lamppost in the front yard, always stared
and pointed, but the kindergartners didn't. Cozzano recognized a
grandnephew twice removed and tried to wave, but his arm didn't wo
rk.

"Goddamn it," he said.

When he moved his tongue, a wave of drool crested over his lower lip and ran out the left side of his mouth. He felt it running in
a thin stream down on to his chin.

Patricia came back into the room, of course, just in time to get a go
od look at this. She was a local girl, former babysitter to James an
d Mary Catherine, had worked in Peoria as a nurse for some ye
ars, and was now back home in Tuscola, working as a babysitter
again. This time for William. Before the stroke, she had treated William Cozzano with awe and deference.

"Whoops, did we have a little accident there?" she said. "Let's ju
st wipe that right up." She took a diaper out of her pocket and ran
it up Cozzano's chin, a brisk uppercut. "Now, here's your co
ffee - decaf, of course, and pills. Lots of little pills."

"What are those pickles?" Cozzano said.

"I'm sorry, William, what did you say?"

He pointed to the little plastic cup that Patricia had set down ne
xt to him, filled with colourful circles and oblongs.

Patricia heaved a big sigh, letting him know that she'd rather he d
idn't ask such questions. "Blood pressure, anticlotting, heart sti
mulation, elimination, breathing, and then of course some vi
tamins."

Cozzano closed his eyes and shook his head. Until two weeks ago
he had never taken anything other than vitamin C and aspirin.

"I put some skim milk in your coffee," Patricia said.

"I take it purple," Cozzano said.

Patricia beamed. "You mean you take it black?"

"Yes, goddamn it."

"It's just a little hot, William, so I wanted to cool it down a bit so
you wouldn't burn your mouth when you took your medicine."

"Don't call me that. I'm the coach," Cozzano said. Then he
closed his eyes and shook his head in frustration.

"Of course you are, William," she said in a buttery voice, and put
the little cup of pills into his right hand. "Now, down the hatch!"

Cozzano did not want to take the pills, merely because he did
not want to give Patricia satisfaction in any way. But at some level
he knew that was puerile. So he tossed the pills into his mouth.
Patricia took the cup from his hand and gave him the coffee, which
was tepid and beige. Cozzano had gotten in the habit of drinking
black full-roast coffee, and the only kind available around here was
the sour greenish grocery-store variety. He lifted the mug to his lips
and forced down a couple of big, awful swallows, feeling the pills
crowd together in his throat and stick halfway down his esophagus.
He would rather leave them stuck there than drink any more of that
small-town coffee.

"Very good!" Patricia said, "I can see you have a knack for this."
Cozzano was accustomed to being a superman and now he was
being praised by a Big Hair Girl for his ability to take pills.
"Would you like to watch a little TV?" Patricia said.
"Yes," he said. Anything to get her out of the room.
"What channel?"
Why didn't she just give him the remote control? Cozzano
heaved a big sigh. He wanted to watch channel 10, CNBC. In his
condition, one of the few things Cozzano could do was manage the
family's investments. And in the economic chaos that had been
unleashed by the President's State of the Union address, they
needed a lot of management.