Multireal (18 page)

"This rivalry has gone on long enough," said the elder Patel with
an exaggerated sneer.

"Yeah?" replied the younger. "I'd like to see you do something
about it, 'Trucio."

"If you don't put down those guns, I will. I've been waiting for this
a long time."

"You don't have the courage," snorted Frederic.

Jara felt Robby's elbow dig into her side. "Phantom Distortions," he
said, sotto voce. For once, the analyst was glad for the interruption. She
knew she recognized the Patel Brothers' banter from somewhere, but
hadn't been able to place it. Jara had only seen Phantom Distortions
once, several years ago, and thought it irritating and cliche-ridden. But
the drama had won so many awards and penetrated so many strata of
society that even she could recite its climactic scene from memory.
This was the part where Juan Nguyen's character took careful aim at
his traitorous brother and-

Petrucio fired the dartgun in his right hand. A sliver of poison
vaulted across the stage and landed in the exact center of Frederic's belt
buckle. "Aren't you glad I'm using SafeShores 1.0 by the Patel
Brothers?" said Petrucio. And as Frederic stood there in slapstick
dismay, the elder Patel proceeded to shoot a dozen more darts along his
brother's belt line in quick succession.

The audience howled with laughter. It was a nice play on the real
line: Aren't you glad I don't have the courage? delivered with maximum
swagger. Jara allowed herself an appreciative smile. It looked like the
Patel Brothers had finally figured out how to put together a decent marketing presentation, even if they were clinging to their lame "safe
shores" motif with too much vigor.

Frederic made a cartoonish grunt of rage that seemed a little too
convincing and then raised his own gun. "Well, so am I, Brother," he
said. And let fire.

In the original Phantom Distortions, this was the moment where
comedy mutated into pathos, where the brothers' long rivalry exploded
into the open with ruinous consequences. But in the Patel Brothers'
version, Petrucio was too quick on the draw. The dartgun in his left
hand shot off with a reverberating thwing-and milliseconds later,
there came the indescribable sound of two darts striking one another
in midair and clattering to the stage.

Even Jara gasped. She had seen MultiReal's innards lying on a
MindSpace workbench, and still Petrucio's feat hardly seemed possible.

Frederic continued firing with grim determination until the air
grew hazy with darts. Each needle met its nemesis in midflight and
ricocheted harmlessly off to the side. After a minute of this, Petrucio
began to take the offensive, with similarly ineffectual results. Soon the
brothers were fighting the kind of melee that only existed in the
dramas: ridiculous amounts of ammunition, impossibly dexterous
moves, and not a single hit on either side.

The muttering in the audience rose several decibels. Robby's
tongue was flapping uselessly back and forth in his mouth.

Jara loaded up a mental imaging program and took a snapshot of
the projectiles the Patels were blasting at one another. She zoomed in
and studied them carefully. These darts appeared to be much larger
than the normal variety, and they were coated with a mirrored substance that made them easier to see. The Patels were not firing directly
at one another, but at an oblique angle that helped the odds considerably. But even given all that, Jara could think of no ordinary piece of
bio/logics that would account for such marksmanship. This could only
be the work of MultiReal.

Finally, at some predetermined moment, Frederic tossed his gun to
the stage, where it was sucked down into the fume. "All this bickering
is pointless, 'Trucio," he said.

Petrucio nodded. "In a MultiReal-on-MultiReal fight, there's only
one possible outcome."

"And that's a draw," said Frederic, hopping off the platform and
waddling awkwardly toward his brother, who had also shed his
weapons. Jara noticed that Frederic's acting abilities were noticeably
strained when portraying emotions like remorse and reconciliation.

The two Patels locked arms and walked together toward the foot
of the stage. Petrucio appeared to be so exhausted that he was almost
limping, though he was doing his best to hide it. "After all," said the
elder brother, "couldn't we all use more safe shores these days?" Jara
could have sworn he was deliberately looking in her direction.

"But it doesn't fucking work that way," Benyamin complained. "You
didn't see Quell on that soccer field. When two people with MultiReal
go up against each other, it all gets resolved like that." He snapped.
"Instantly. In your head. If they were really having a MultiReal-onMultiReal fight, then the winner would have hit the loser."

Jara stretched her neck and luxuriated in the SeeNaRee breeze. It
was nice to be back in a virtual environment at the Surina Enterprise
Facility, even if she had to put up with Benyamin's whining. She
wasn't sure which beach this was supposed to be, or perhaps it was an
amalgam of several. What did it matter? Jara could feel muscles in her
neck unknotting and sluggish nerve endings in her fingers tingle with
warmth from the SeeNaRee sun. She wondered fleetingly what had
happened to Greth Tar Griveth's petty blackmail scheme. Jara assumed
that the lack of updates meant the situation was under control.

"I know that's not how MultiReal works, Ben," she said. "And the Patels do too. But what did you want them to do, get on stage and just
stare at each other for an hour? I thought they did a pretty good job
illustrating the concept. Besides, that wasn't the end of the show.
Petrucio took a bunch of questions afterward, and he explained the
whole thing in detail."

"Shooting down darts in midair," put in Merri from her spot
nearby on the sand. "We should have thought of that." She sighed as
the tide came trickling up the beach to lick her bare toes.

"Listen, we don't have time to worry about the Patels," said Jara.
"Right now we need to be thinking about computational rules. We're
going to have twenty-three people bouncing choice cycles all over the
place in a week. It'll be a nightmare unless we make some decisions."

The blonde channel manager combed her fingers thoughtfully
through the damp sand. "Why do we even need to worry about it?" she
said. "Can't we just turn the whole MultiReal-against-MultiReal feature off?"

"You mean disallow competing choice cycles altogether?" said Jara.

Ben shook his head. "I don't think that's practical." He wanted
nothing to do with the decadent SeeNaRee Jara's mood had conjured
up, choosing to sit instead at a rigid oak conference table wedged
incongruously in the middle of the sand. "If you don't have any competing choice cycles, you're defenseless against anyone who uses the
program against you. That means the first person to activate MultiReal
would always win. Right? Talk about a nightmare! People would flip
on the program every two seconds, on the off chance that something
important was about to happen."

"So then let's just deactivate competing realities for the exposition,"
said Merri. "We don't have to figure everything out today, do we?"

"Not everything," said Jara, "but we can't put these decisions off
forever, Merri. Things are moving so quickly, we might not get
another window like this. We need to make some decisions today."

Benyamin smacked his palm on the table and looked up with inspiration gleaming through his pores. "What if we just let the
market decide?"

Jara frowned skeptically. "How would that work?"

"The whole program's based on choice cycles. Every time you jump to
another potential reality, you create another one. So why not just charge by
the choice cycle? That way you wouldn't waste money using MultiReal to
grab the last cracker on the buffet table-you'd save your choice cycles for
the things that really matter. The things you're willing to pay for."

"A libertarian solution," mused Merri. Her circles in the sand grew
wider and wider until the sea washed them away.

Jara leaned back on her elbows and let Ben's suggestion roam
through her mental hallways for a minute. It seemed like a solution
that Speaker Khann Frejohr would love. It seemed like a solution
Natch would love. "I don't think that would work either," she said after
a moment of reflection.

Ben was peeved. "Why not?"

"It wouldn't turn out the way you think. You're basically saying
that the richest person in the room is always going to get what he
wants. Do you really want to put a system like that in place?"

"But sometimes that's just the way the world works," the young
apprentice retorted. "You make more money, you have more choices."

"This is totally different, Ben. Remember Horvil's story about
haggling with that street vendor? We're not just talking about kicking
soccer balls around here. Think about it-there must be a thousand
Lunar tycoons with more money than half of Creed Elan put together.
They'd get the upper hand on every deal. All they'd need to do is keep
dishing out money for more choice cycles. It wouldn't be fair."

"Life would be pretty harsh for the diss, too," added Merri. "You'd
literally get pushed around all day, and there'd be nothing you could
do about it."

"And let's not forget the Islanders and the Pharisees," said Jara.

Benyamin rose from the table and began stomping to the edge of the water and back. "I can't believe I'm hearing this. Not fair?" He
threw his hands up toward the sky. "This isn't a question of ethics,
Jara. It's basic economics. If our product doesn't give customers unlimited choice cycles, then someone else's will. Do you think the Patels are
going to sell their customers a limited product?"

"They don't have a say in it," said Merri. "Natch said that limited
choice cycles are built into the Patel Brothers' licensing agreement.
They can't run a product with unlimited choice cycles."

"I didn't realize that," said Ben, vindication sculpted into his face.
"This is great-we're going to crush them in the marketplace. If our
version of MultiReal gives you unlimited choice, and theirs just craps
out at some point ... who's going to buy from the Patel Brothers?"

Merri nodded hesitantly. Jara got to her feet and took a few steps
toward the bay. She watched the tiny virtual sand crabs scurrying on
the beach, jousting with each other in accordance with the SeeNaRee
algorithms.

And suddenly she felt her thoughts line up like dominoes. Xi
Xong telling Jara that Petrucio knew she was attending the presentation ... The two Patels blazing away at one another fruitlessly ...
Frederic Patel discarding his weapon onto the stage ... All this bickering is pointless, 'Trucio. In a MultiReal-on-MultiReal fight, there's only one
possible outcome. And that's a draw.

"Wait a minute," said the analyst. "I understand now. The Patel
Brothers. They were trying to tell us something with that demo."

Benyamin's mouth curled into a sallow frown. "Like what?"

"They're trying to tell us that there's another way," Jara continued.
"A more egalitarian way. What if we give everyone, say, ten thousand
choice cycles a month? Or fifty thousand? Whether you're a Lunar
tycoon on Feynman or just some L-PRACG bureaucrat in Beijingwhether you bought Possibilities 1.0 from Surina/Natch or SafeShores
1.0 from the Patels-you get the same number of alternate realities as
everyone else. And you can't buy any more, under any circumstances."

Ben wasn't mollified in the slightest. "So you're saying we should
handicap our product so the Patels can compete with us?"

"I'm saying we should prevent MultiReal from turning into an
endless arms race of who can stockpile the most choice cycles." Jara
stubbornly folded her arms across her chest. "I suppose it works to
Frederic and Petrucio's advantage. But that's not why we would do it."

"Natch isn't going to like this at all," said Ben, walking around the
analyst to confront her face to face. "I don't like it. You're putting an
artificial cap on a system that doesn't need one. That won't work. It
never works."

Jara shook her head. "This isn't sociology class, Ben. MultiReal is
dangerous. Haven't you figured that out yet? We can't afford to make
a reckless decision here. People's lives could be at stake."

"Don't be so melodramatic," interrupted Ben, throwing up his
hands. "I get the point already. But these things have a way of working
themselves out. They always do. The Lunar tycoons would waste all
their choice cycles trying to one-up each other. They wouldn't care
what goes on down here."

Merri climbed to her feet and eyed the conflict between the two
apprentices with unease. Ben and Jara were standing toe to toe now,
glaring at one another with a hostility that the Patels had only pantomimed this morning. The SeeNaRee noticed the discord and hurled
a strong wind along the shoreline, kicking up bits of sand and shell to
nip at their ankles.