Omnitopia Dawn (44 page)

“Early this morning,” Poppy said. “She’ll be meeting us at preschool in a while.”

“Okay,” Dev said. He looked over at his upside-down daughter and sighed. “I hope my day starts going as calmly as hers . . .” He headed for the doors. “Talk to you later, Miss Pops.”

“Right you are, Dev.”

He headed out and down to the bike rack. There a stream of Omnitopia employees were showing up at the Castle and others were leaving in a tangle of bikes being parked, unparked, or just left on or picked up from the grass, while the line of golf carts out in the road was starting to string away out of sight around the curve. A lot of the people going in and out looked grim or preoccupied—in many cases so much so that they didn’t even react to Dev’s presence. That worried him, as this contact with his people was normally one of the things that made his workday a pleasure.

Dev pulled his bike out of the rack and rode off toward the PR building, trying hard to keep his mind on his riding.
I wish I could just dump this interview,
he thought. But Frank hadn’t mentioned the possibility to him, which suggested to Dev that Frank knew perfectly well it was too important to cancel. Dev’s thoughts kept going back to the crowd that would be gathering around the Tree, preparing virtual weapons, hastily coding defenses against the oncoming onslaught—

He sighed as he came around the curve to the PR building.
That’s their fight now. Trust them to get on with it. Meanwhile, my fight is here . . .

Dev parked the bike in the last space in the rack and loped up the stairs into the PR building. The upstairs halls under the glass ceiling were busy, people nodding at him casually as he passed, but not stopping to chat as they more normally might have done, and the concern on their faces made Dev’s stomach flip- flop again. He couldn’t do anything but concentrate on getting his breathing under control. As he headed down along the northern curve of the building among the freestanding workspaces and meeting areas with their sofas and low tables, he spotted Joss coming along toward him, wearing something most unusual for him: a frown.

“Problems?” Dev said to him as they met.

“
You
should be asking
me?
” Joss said under his breath. “Mine are nothing compared to yours, I’m sure.”

Dev looked around at Joss’ staff, who were going to and fro at the same somewhat accelerated pace as everyone else he’d seen this morning. “I’d like to think all this hubbub is still about the rollout . . .”

“Only some of it,” Joss said. “We’re starting to catch a lot of grief from the world’s nosier newspapers as they look for a big bad-news story to tell.” He snorted. “Some of the British tabloids are getting ready to print the most unbelievable things. I won’t trouble you with the details now, except that Big Jim’s going to have himself a party suing a couple of them when the dust settles.”

“Assuming the day leaves us something for it to settle on,” Dev said. “Is Miss Harrington in place?”

Joss nodded. “About five minutes ago. She’s having a nice cup of coffee.” He raised his eyebrows. “Not that I’m sure she needs it. She seems a little wired this morning.”

“Exposure to the corporate caffeine culture?” Dev said. “Or something else?”

“Not sure.” Joss let out a breath. “Boss, I don’t like to speak ill of people, especially when they’re in the building, but there’s something shifty about that one.”

“You mean
besides
her intention to make me look like a hypercorporate bad guy?”

“Maybe.”

“How much does she know about what’s going on?”

Joss shook his head. “Not sure. Granted, people will always let things slip a little if they see somebody with an all-areas pass, But in this case, I’m not sure. Miss Harrington hasn’t said anything obvious to any of my staff, anyway, or I’d have heard about it.” Then Joss sighed. “I should get on with things, Boss, it’s going to be a crazy day. Did Frank give you the list of the microspots we needs you to do for media tonight?”

Dev rubbed his eyes. “To tell you the truth, I don’t remember right now. Send the list to my phone, if you like, or the laptop, and I’ll deal with it later. What time are we talking?”

“Starting around six.”

“Fine. Send me the list.” Joss headed off down the hall, and so did Dev, in opposite directions this time, Dev briefly walking backward. “Room two?” he shouted after Joss.

“That’s right.”

Dev continued on down around the semicircle until he reached a large dark-glass wall screening off its own semicircular end. This was divided into two halves: Dev headed for the left-hand one.

Here goes nothing . . .
he thought.
Remember, now, don’t get freaked, don’t get rattled, keep it calm.

But in the back of his mind he just kept seeing his troops gathering down there in a last line of defense around the Tree: and out beyond them, massing to overwhelm them, the darkness . . .

The meeting room was unusually stark for Omnitopia, Delia had thought: a dark gray oval slate table about six feet long and four feet wide, with a number of the ubiquitous RealFeel chairs placed around it. That was it: black glass walls, no windows, no other furnishings.

She had settled herself down in the chair at one end of the table with less nervousness than she’d sat in one yesterday, when she first came into contact with the RealFeel interface. It had been beyond strange to feel and touch and even taste things that she knew couldn’t actually be there. And afterward, when she got out of the interface, had been even stranger. Real life had felt peculiarly colorless and flat next to the hyped, pumped, artificially brilliant landscape she’d just emerged from.
As if you’d been in a stained-glass world, she thought, and then stepped down out of the glass into the gray streets around the church.

She shook her head and reached out to the coffee cup, then stopped, realizing it was already empty.
I’ve been living on this stuff,
she thought.
These people are getting to me.
But it wasn’t so much because of their own caffeine ingestion, though there was plenty of that around. These people all seemed to live their lives at the same pumped, overexcited level, as if everything
mattered
more to them than it did to most people.
They really
have
drunk the Kool-Aid,
she thought last night when she was finally able to stretch out in bed in the hotel with the lights off. What bothered her—if anything did—was her certainty that these people, regardless of the department they worked in, were not only aware of her opinions about them, but amused by them. Her first impulse had been to dismiss this as some kind of bizarre corporate hubris. But that concept had suffered some erosion over the past eighteen hours, for there was no ignoring the fact that these were some of the smartest corporate types, from the highest to the lowest, that she’d ever met, and she had met some pretty low ones in her time.

The glass of the wall slid open door- fashion, and Dev Logan walked in. “Good morning,” he said. “I didn’t keep you waiting too long, did I?”

She glanced up at him, smiling. “Not at all.”

“Good,” Dev said. “The pace around here has accelerated a little today, and I’m going to spend the whole day wondering if I’ve been late for something . . .” He walked around to the RealFeel chair at the other end of the table and sat down in it. There was a brief decorous hum of motors as it shifted its balance and support settings to suit him.

Delia raised her eyebrows. “Are they all programmed to do that?” she said. “Recognize you instantly?”

He laughed. “These? Hardly. But they do recognize anybody who’s sat in them and adjusted them before, and I’ve easily sat in every chair in
this
building more than once.” He got a rueful look. “I spend a lot more time here than I really want to. But how about you? Did you have time to get used to one of these yesterday?”

“Oh, yes,” Delia said. “I used about every form of input you have. This one—” She pushed herself back in the chair. “It takes a little getting used to.”

“Seems a little too brightly colored?” Dev said. “Everything a little overstated?”

“Well, now that you mention it . . .”

Dev nodded as he reached up for the eyecups. “We tried using more natural colorings,” he said, “but our users overruled us. Said they preferred a more vivid palette. I’ll be spending some of today looking at this month’s palette polls to see what the newest take on the subject is.”

“Sounds scintillating,” Delia said, as she fitted her own eyecups into place and blinked a few times to make sure they weren’t on too tight.

“You have no idea,” Dev said. The droll weariness of his voice surprised and amused her. “Ready?”

“Certainly.”

The darkness fastened down tight around her, somehow darker than the darkness inside the cups. Then Delia found herself actually inside the fabulous “virtual office” she’d heard so much about, with its numerous desks and midair hangings of documents and files. “Goodness,” she said, just standing still for a moment as she looked around. “How do you find anything?”

“I call it,” Dev said, stepping out of nothingness beside her. “I simply say, ‘System management—’ ”

“Here, Dev,” said the Omnitopia control voice.

“Get me the request letter from
Time
magazine regarding Delia Harrington’s visit, please?”

“Which one, Dev?” said the dulcet voice. “There are three. The first is dated February thirteenth, when the project was first mooted; then March twelfth, when the initial agreement was signed, and June fourteenth when Miss Harrington was assigned and vetted—”

“That’s the one,” Dev said.

A piece of glowing virtual paper floated over to him: he plucked it out of the air, showed Delia the letterhead, and glanced at it for a moment before tossing it out into the darkness again. “See?” he said. “It’s that easy.”

“So there’s something to the statement that Omnitopia’s main effect has been to build you the world’s most effective filing system.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Dev said, grinning. “It has other purposes.”

“But you’re certainly very polite to it,” Delia said.

“It’s always wiser, I think.” Dev glanced around the office as if looking for something. “Better treat matter as soul than soul as matter—which Zen master said that? Then again, probably none—doesn’t sound very Zen. Anyway, machinery has a tendency to turn on you if you don’t respect it—that’s been my experience. I’d sooner play it safe.”

He waved a hand and all the bright documents hanging in the air vanished, leaving Delia with an unobstructed view of the big view-screen that also existed in Dev’s private office. Right now it was showing a view from some skyscraper in New York. Far below, a flow of traffic speckled yellow with cabs was pouring by, while pedestrians under umbrellas hustled past, the whole vista being hammered by an unsympathetic rain. “So,” Dev said. “Let’s think about where to go. You’ve seen the list of Macrocosms, of course. And probably a selection of the Microcosms. But lists can be pretty dry. I might be able to help you track down something congenial. Do you have a favorite time period? A favorite place? A story you remember from childhood that you were fond of?”

She didn’t answer for a moment, wondering if this was some kind of Rorschach test, and determined not to give him anything useful. But Dev’s eyes widened, and then he laughed.

“Oh, no,” he said. “You think this is some weird kind of analytical tool! Like we’re trying to dig out your deepest darkest secrets and then slip you subliminal ads for Deep Dark Chocolate Cornflakes or something.” And he roared with laughter.

Delia made a face, annoyed that her thoughts had been that obvious. “It’s a fear that a lot of people have these days,” she said. “Online marketers have become so sneaky, so sophisticated—”

“Delia,” Dev said. “I have no desire whatsoever to psychoanalyze you. You want some of that, talk to my dad—he knows lots of nice shrinks back at Penn. All of whom dumped him because they said he was the worst client they’d ever seen: not that they don’t still happily drink his whiskey when he invites them out here and tries to pump them for what they
really
think of him.” Dev snickered, then got control of himself. “I’m sorry. Seriously, just pick a historical period if you like; that should be neutral enough. Who could tell anything about you from that?”

“Well . . .” she said, and pondered for a moment, uncertain.

“Tell you what,” Dev said. “If you like, while you’re thinking, I’ll pick one. You’re busy trying to figure me out; let me give you a hand. But I need something first.”

He reached into the air and plucked something out. It was a name badge of the cheap sticky HELLO, MY NAME IS type. The name apparently scrawled in some kind of Sharpie marker on the blank part of the badge, in cockeyed capitals, said RUFUS T. FIREFLY.

He slapped it onto his shirt. Delia looked at this, bemused. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.