Perion Synthetics (20 page)

Eileen snorted into her martini as the
dealer called out a Midnight.

At a distance, she couldn’t hear what her
dear husband was running his mouth about. She could tell something was up
because the usually docile Benny was practically screaming into his phone. His
slight hair was uncombed, waving off to one side as if a permanent breeze were
following him around. His Atlantic City chic wardrobe was gone, replaced by a
simple white button down with a bolo tie and loose cuffs he had bunched around
his elbows. At least the shirt was tucked into his blue jeans, and someone had
had the sense to keep him from putting on his cowboy boots, as he did when he
was stressed and not thinking.

The Boardwalk was no place for a native
Texan, but Benny had hired everyone from stylists to speech therapists to help
perfect the suave, almost gangster persona he had used to launch The White Line
media house. And though a video or a picture from Benny’s past would show up on
VNet every once in a while, no one really cared. He ran the third biggest feed
in the country, eleventh on the planet. People were quick to forgive who he was
back then when they stood in awe of who he was now.

Benny didn’t look up as he passed the table,
nor did any member of his posse acknowledge Eileen’s existence. It wasn’t until
he had entered the elevator and looked back to survey the floor that his eyes
met hers. Then he did that thing she had come to hate so much, that
condescending underbelly scratch of his finger, the nonverbal
come here
command he used with his employees.

Was that all she was to him anymore, a
goddamn employee?

If he wanted her company right now, at
eleven thirty on a Friday night, then someone was in legal trouble, and not the
kind that could wait until Monday morning. Somewhere, someone was in deep shit.
Deep enough to bring the little cockroach out of his dark hole and back to the
bright lights of Atlantic City.

Eileen waited for the elevator doors to
close and then tossed a couple of hundred dollar chips at the dealer. A passing
waiter collected her empty glass. She asked the stringy young man to line up
three Manhattans and bring them up to the penthouse. The fifty dollar chip she
placed on his tray made him smile; and he, unlike the dealer, snuck a glance at
Eileen’s cleavage, which she had put on display with the help of an expensive
Gregory Pruit dress she had had flown in from Los Angeles the day before.

At the elevator, Eileen spied the waiter
across the room with his similarly uniformed chums, having a good chuck. Laugh
it up, she thought. Get all your chucks out now while you’re still employed.

She swooned as the car began its ascent.
Gripping the handrail, Eileen closed her eyes against the bright gold spots
swirling in her vision. Maybe it hadn’t been such a great idea to drink so much
so early, but then, if she were going to have to spend the rest of the evening
with Benny and his whore, the more booze she had in her the better.

The matrix of circled numbers on the wall
lit up in sequence.

Eileen thought of James Perion and frowned
for a moment. It was because of his death that Benny had skipped town in the
middle of the night without so much as a knock or a note on her bedroom door.
She had woken to find the penthouse empty and her husband’s room in disarray.
It was Daryl who had finally clued her in, though he had been hesitant to do
so, as if he could sense the wrong Benny had done her.

She wished he hadn’t gone, wished she could
have been sitting with him when Donato Banks went live on his feed to all but
repudiate Benny’s claims. He had a man inside Perion City, and that man
reported no official statement from the company, no funeral procession with
hundreds of thousands of people looking on, and most importantly, no body. And
though he produced no evidence, no recent video of the great man himself, the
damage had been done. The burden of proof was squarely on Benny Coker, he
claimed, and the rest of the world agreed.

Just thinking about the hurt look on Benny’s
face, about the pain he likely felt for once again being stepped on by Banks
Media, made a warmth trickle up the inside of Eileen’s legs. She rubbed them
together as the car slowed.

The elevator dinged at the penthouse floor
and the doors opened to a long, dim hallway. On the walls were individually
spotlighted photos of great media titans, inspirational icons hand-picked by
Benny. Conspicuously absent were pictures of Donato Banks and Lincoln Tate.

“Good evening, Mrs. Coker,” said Daryl. He
was perched on his stool by the door like an obedient watch dog.

“Good evening,” replied Eileen. “I trust my
husband is already inside the whore? Sorry,
with
the whore?”

Daryl gave an appreciative smile but said
nothing as he opened the door for her. The foyer opened directly into the
conference area where Benny and his assistant were seated. In front of them,
the vidscreen wall had been cut up into six panels; five floating heads stared
back from various offices across the globe. The sixth panel was dark. An icon
at the bottom indicated it was a voice-only call. Gray static jumped across the
frame every few seconds.

“And given the climate inside the city, we
believe it would be too risky to attempt an incursion. We haven’t dealt with
Joseph Perion before. We don’t know if he will be retaining the same legal team
as his father.”

The talking heads quieted as Eileen dropped
into the chair next to Benny.

“What do you think, dear?” asked Benny. “If Joseph
hires a new legal team, we’ll lose our leverage on Adam Roe.”

She looked into his eyes for some form of
recognition, but found none.

“That’s only a concern if James Perion is
really dead,” she said. “Until we know that for sure, we have to assume the
legal team will remain the same.”

“He
is
dead,” said Benny. “My guy has
an inside source.”

“
Your
guy,” said Eileen, scoffing.

One of the heads cleared his throat. “We
need to go public with this new information now. The market share projections
are through the roof.”

“What new information?” asked Eileen.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Benny. “We can’t
break the story until our man is out of danger.”

“Thanks,” said a voice from the sixth panel.

“Obviously, we’re all trying to make a play
at the Perion story. Myself, Banks, and Tate. And in doing so, we all find
ourselves in the same position, with people on the inside who are now in what
we know is very real danger, and I don’t mean from a legal standpoint. Anything
we release about Perion, whether true or not, will turn their focus on us.
They’ve got the power and the resources to bring any of the houses down.”

Benny sighed and looked down. His right hand
reached for the whore’s, but it stopped, pretending to scratch an itch instead.

“Hell, they could bring
all
of our
houses down,” he said.

“So what do we do?” asked one of the heads.

Eileen rolled her eyes.

“We wait,” replied Benny. “We wait until we
know exactly what Joe Perion and his new regime are up to. If we don’t have a
complete and
irrefutable
story, then we won’t be able to generate the necessary
public outrage. Without that, we’re all gonna take it up the ass.”

“Won’t be the first time,” said Eileen,
under her breath. She caught eyes with the whore, eyes which fluttered away.

Benny leaned forward. “Dear, I need you to
start preparing for the possibility that our man is discovered. Take it from
both personal and corporate standpoints. I want this story chambered and ready
to feed when the time comes. If we suspect Banks or Tate is about to go public,
we dump the whole thing onto the network and let it all ride.”

“But that will expose…” said a head.

“Our man has contingency plans for that. If
his identity is compromised, he’ll be the first to know. Until then, we stay on
this story as long as we can.”

The talking heads nodded in unison.

“Now,” said Benny, standing up, “if you will
excuse me, I’d like to have a private word with the man on the scene.”

One by one, the five panels on the vidscreen
blinked away, until all that remained was the fuzzy black static. It expanded
to fill the empty space.

“Ladies, please, a little privacy?” asked
Benny.

Eileen waited for the whore to leave before
standing. She placed a hand on Benny’s shoulder.

“Welcome home,” she said.

Benny nodded and tapped her hand with his.

The lights in the hallway were down, but
Eileen found her way to her bedroom by dragging two fingers on the wall.
Curiosity kept her at the threshold of her door, frozen in place and listening.
She heard her husband sigh, almost groan.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

“I’m fine, Benny.” The voice on the other
end of the call sounded weary.

“And your cover?”

“It’s getting harder every day to channel
Meltdown, but it’s holding. Look, everything’s okay. I wouldn’t have even
contacted you if it weren’t for…”

“I know,” said Benny. “I’m still having
trouble wrapping my head around it.”

“I just can’t figure out why they would use
her
.”
He cleared his throat. “She used to say it all the time. Whenever things got
rough, whenever I was down on myself.
The stars will turn for you.
That
same face, the same expressions. It can’t be a coincidence.”

“And you’re sure she’s a synthetic?”

“Like nothing I’ve ever seen before, Benny.
She’s a brand new deal.”

“Then she has to be part of whatever Joe
Perion is cooking up. I say you stick by her, let her lead you to the answer.”

“I don’t know if I can...”

“It’s personal now. If Perion made a
synthetic out of Eileen… I’d…”

“You’d what, boss?”

Yeah Benny, thought Eileen. What the hell
would you do?

“I’d ask for another.” Benny gave a brief
chuck. “One for the plane, one for the Seattle office.”

“That might make Mrs. Coker jealous.”

“She already thinks I’m cheating on her, as
if Cora is a tenth of the woman Eileen is. At least I’d be cheating on my wife
with
my wife
.”

“Good luck feeding that. I’m gonna head back
to the condo and lay low for a bit, figure out how to move forward. It just
feels like something has started, Benny, like we’ve reached some kind of
critical mass. I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to stay in the
PC.”

“That’s completely up to you.”

“I may not be able to call again for a
while.”

“Upload when you can, and only when it’s
safe.”

“Will do, Benny.”

“Take care of yourself, Gilbert.”

Eileen stood in the darkness of her room for
several minutes, first listening to her husband’s retreating footsteps and then
to the ringing in her ears as the silence took over. She sat down on the bed
and grasped at the echoes of Benny’s words. Would he really want multiple
copies of her? Did he really miss her that much?

She waited for an answer that never came.
Instead, a soft knocking sounded from the door.

“Yes?” she asked, her tears not far off.

“Mrs. Coker, a waiter is here with the
drinks you ordered,” said Daryl.

“Come in,” she replied, turning away from
the door.

Rubber soles against hardwood floors; a tray
sliding across her dresser; the tinkling of ice in glasses.

She didn’t turn around until she heard the
door close.

The waiter was still standing there.

“Is there anything else I can
do
for
you?” he asked, his fingers already working at the buttons of his shirt.

Eileen put up her hand. “Not tonight, Tyler.
Not tonight.”

Friday turned to Saturday, and Gilbert Reyes sat with his
legs dangling over the edge of the loading dock behind the warehouse, trying to
beat back the sudden cold with a warm cigarette. He didn’t normally smoke—synth
alternatives were safer and more satisfying—but he needed an excuse to go out
back and make a phone call. It was risky calling Benny on an unsecured line,
but the news couldn’t wait. He tried to minimize the danger by pulling the SIM
card as soon as the call ended, snapping it in two before throwing the pieces
in opposite directions. And since the phone would still give off an exploratory
signal without it, he pulled the battery and tossed it at the gate on the far
side of the parking lot. Now the phone sat on the evercrete beside him, disassembled
and useless.

Gil understood the feeling. Seeing Jackie in
the synthetic flesh had hollowed out something inside of him, a space he
thought he had long since filled with acceptance.

He took a long drag of the cigarette and
heard Jackie’s voice saying, “Those things will kill you.” As if he had
anything to fear from cancer. At the first sign, Benny Coker would have shelled
out the money for the VTech—anything to preserve the life of his deep cover
aggregator. But he couldn’t tell Jackie that, couldn’t let slip his true
employer. To her, he was just a handyman with a penchant for trite Zen
aphorisms, someone she called when her terminal froze up or when the copier
broke down. He was one of the few commoners allowed in the Spire, though only
when summoned by some brainiac who could synthesize human emotion but couldn’t
figure out how to read their email without downloading every virus known to
man.

That damn copier.

Gil hadn’t shown up at the Spire that
morning expecting to meet the woman of his dreams, but he was blown away by her
presence all the same. She had met him in the lobby, signed him in through the
security checkpoints, and rode with him in awkward silence to the eleventh
floor. And even though Gil found the problem immediately, he stalled for time,
using the interim to ask Jackie about her life, what she did, and who she was
seeing.