The Religion War (7 page)

The hydrocab stopped in front of the GIC world headquarters building, a modest complex only four stories high. A consortium of countries had created GIC ten years ago to pool databases from all available sources. The countries passed laws making it illegal to have any sort of commercial information system that didn't feed into GIC every evening. The idea was that terrorist sleeper cells could be identified by their activities once all databases were merged. Special mining software searched unimaginable mounds of digital data every minute looking for clues, such as purchases of materials that might be made into weapons, access to terror-related web sites, even hydrocab travel in the vicinity of suspected targets.

When GIC was first proposed, concerned citizens rioted to stop it. People saw it as a threat to freedom, something that could easily become worse than the violence it sought to eliminate.The resistance ended when al-Zee's operatives started bombing anti-GIC rallies.The protesters made wonderful targets because lots of camera crews were there to record the carnage. Al-Zee was called a terrorist, but he was also a brilliant tactician who knew the value of free publicity. And he wasn't worried about GIC. He figured that an organization that large, run by a coalition of a hundred governments, had no chance of being effective.

He would have been right, but he didn't count on the bureaucratic logjam having the ironic effect of totally freeing the programmers and techies to do what they needed to do. And budgets were no problem either because terror-defense was a world priority. Global Information Corporation was so poorly managed that the technical people started forming self-managed groups, operating without approval, and actually finished the majority of the design and implementation before the governing bodies agreed on a mission statement. It was one of the greatest technical achievements of all time, completed astonishingly quickly, thanks to an utter lack of management and the skill of one particular technical genius.

The Avatar waved his universal payment card over the console in the backseat, pressed the button marked "50% tip," and hit Enter.

"I will be about an hour. Wait here for me," said the Avatar.

Hector turned and looked at him, surprised by a request that sounded more like a command. It was inappropriate to ask a hydrocab to wait five minutes, much less an hour. There were plenty of hydrocabs in the area, and if Hector waited, he'd lose an hour's worth of fares.

"I know," said the Avatar, responding to the expression on Hector's face. "It's wrong to ask you to wait. But you will wait, won't you?"

"Si," said Hector, more confused than annoyed.

The Avatar, still looking like a bum with a plaid blanket, approached the guard's desk in the lobby of GIC.The guard gave a look of practiced indifference, the sort that says, "I might be working as a security guard, but you're not better than me."

"I'm here to see your director of human resources," said the Avatar with a pleasant smile.

"Name?" asked the guard, without making eye contact.

"Avatar."

"I don't see you on the list. Do you have an appointment with Mr. Portius?"

"I'm meeting with him in five minutes," said the Avatar.

"Someone forgot to call your name down. I always tell them that they have to call the name down at least an hour ahead of time. But they have so much turnover up there, no one knows their head from their elbow."

"Perhaps you could add my name to the list," suggested the Avatar.

The security guard made eye contact with the Avatar for the first time, and saw what he thought might be the most harmless looking human on the planet.

"That would be a security violation."

"Yes, but you wouldn't want to disappoint Mr. Portius."

"I'm between a rock and a wet spot here. I'd better call up and see what his office says," grumbled the guard, reaching for his phone.

Jennifer answered the phone on the fifth ring, after remembering that Portius' secretary was out to lunch, leaving her to cover the phones.

"John Portius' office.This is Jennifer. How may I help you?"

"This is Frank, in the lobby. I got a guy here to see Mr. Portius and he isn't on the list."

"What's his name?" asked Jennifer helpfully, having nothing to compare against the answer, but feeling it was the responsible question to ask.

"Avatar."

"Hmm," stalled Jennifer, not wanting to admit she didn't have access to Portius' calendar and so it was silly to have asked for his name. "Yes, that sounds right," she bluffed.

"Thanks. I'll send him up," said the guard.

"Fifth floor. Sign in first. Here's your name tag."

"Thank you. I guess it was a good choice for me to come here at lunchtime," said the Avatar without explanation.

The guard half-listened, filled out the temporary security badge, and replied, "Yeah. I'm hungry too. Put this tag on your shirt."

John Portius was surprised to see the Avatar standing in his office. The old man obviously wasn't an employee because the company routinely weeded out any workers overfifty.The man wasn't a vendor, because they always dressed better than the employees. He had to be there for some reason. The temporary security badge advertised that he wasn't dangerous.

"Can I help you?" asked Portius.

"Yes," replied the Avatar.

"Um...how?" asked Portius, shifting uncomfortably in his chair.

"I would like to speak with your most angry employee," said the Avatar.

"Do I know you?"

"I hear that question a lot, and no, you don't," said the Avatar.

"Who are you? And why do you want to talk to an angry employee?"

"My name is Avatar.The rest would take too long to explain. B ut I can assure you it's a fascinating reason. And I don't want
any
angry employee. I want the
angriest."

"Well, I'm sorry, Mr. Avatar, but I'm very busy today. I don't believe you have an appointment."

"That's okay. I'll just stand outside your office," said the Avatar.

"I'd rather you didn't," said Portius, reaching for a ringing phone.

The Avatar left the office and stood just out of sight, while Portius' attention went to the phone call and another crisis in full bloom.The Avatar smiled politely as employees walked past, none of them quite sure what to make of him. Forty minutes later, a walking tornado turned the corner and headed straight at him, spewing a monologue of antimanagement invectives. He was wiry, about six feet tall, with unkempt black hair and a walk that looked more praying mantis than programmer. He was barefooted, a violation of several corporate rules.

"This entire place is filled with idiots! Who's doing the hiring here? Do you just have to say you
want
to be a programmer and that's good enough?" asked Eric Mackey of anyone who might be within earshot. The Avatar watched as a manager on the way out of his office thought better of it and did a quick U-turn to avoid the approaching wrath.

Mackey liked to mark his territory with indignant yelling. He liked attention, he liked being right, and he liked it even better when other people could be proven wrong. He was a bona fide technical genius, a human patent factory, and a recipe for social disaster. But Mackey didn't wait for disasters to find him; he sought them with the delight of a hunter on opening day of deer season. He found guilty pleasure in exposing the mental foibles of those less gifted, and that included almost everyone.

The Avatar could sense Mackey's pattern, clean and unmistakable. He was the angriest employee and, by extension, the most talented, because anyone with lesser value would have been fired for that sort of behavior. "What took you so long?" asked the Avatar, verbally intercepting Mackey, who was on a mission to dress down the director of human resources.

Mackey stopped and sized up the Avatar, instantly recognizing him as a puzzle. Mackey liked puzzles even more than he liked yelling at people who annoyed him.This would be worth a few minutes of his time. Then he could get back to the main attraction—yelling at idiots.

"What do you mean?" asked Mackey, requesting the next clue.

"There's something you don't know about your databases," said the Avatar.

Mackey scrunched his face and stared at the Avatar. If there was one thing he hated, it was the prospect that someone knew something he didn't. This old man might be a nut, but it didn't matter where the challenge was coming from. A challenge was a challenge.

"I highly doubt that, buddy," he said.

"Very well then. Continue with what you were doing," said the Avatar.

Mackey hesitated, took a step toward Portius' office, then stopped and turned back.

"What don't I know?" he asked.

"It might take some time to explain. If you're in a hurry I can wait until after you've yelled at Mr. Portius."

"Ah, it'll hold. I yell at him every day. Come here," said Mackey, starting off toward an empty conference room across the hall.The Avatar followed. Inside, Mackey swung a chair from the table and pushed it toward the Avatar, an invitation to sit. Mackey took the nice chair at the head of the table.

"Let's hear it. I've got two minutes," he said.

Mackey never thought to ask the Avatar his name, or what he was doing in the building dressed like a bum. None of that seemed important to Mackey. He just wanted to know if there really was a hole in his knowledge of the database, as unlikely as that seemed to him.

"Your organization holds the data of every transaction in the modern world," said the Avatar.

"So far, you've proven that you know what building you're in. Does this get better?" asked Mackey, pleased with his put-down.

"You know what people buy, what Internet pages they read, where they travel, what they like, and what they don't like. To date, you have only used that information in the way that your charter has authorized you: searching for terrorists."

"I am getting seriously bored now," said Mackey, leaning back in his chair.

"The data holds more than you imagined.There are patterns you haven't mined, that you never thought to seek. Those patterns are the most important part of the data, lying dormant, waiting to be discovered."

"No," said Mackey. "Our data mining software finds all the important patterns. I wrote most of that code myself."

The Avatar stood and walked to the whiteboard, picked up an erasable pen, and started to draw concentric circles.

"We think our preferences are caused by our reason. Sometimes we think our preferences are caused by biology, or experience. Those are all parts of the answer, but only small parts. For every decision we make, there is always someone who influenced it, either currently or in the past. Usually, people are unaware of who influences them. Sometimes it's as simple as a group of friends who all dress alike, not noticing that one of them always starts the trend. It is our most basic nature to imitate other people. The mimicry is most obvious with babies, but it never stops. We don't notice our own copying because we're so adept at rationalizing what we do, even to ourselves. Sometimes our role models are people we don't even know. When President Kennedy stopped wearing hats in the early 1960s, the entire men's hat industry crumbled. If you asked anyone why he stopped wearing a hat, he would give you a reason that sounded plausible without ever realizing what the real influence was."

This was getting a little more interesting, Mackey thought. He didn't know where it was heading, and he liked that. The Avatar continued, illustrating his point on the board as he talked. "Your database captures these lines of influence, but only indirectly. Every trend, every new idea, every innovation, every opinion, starts with one person and ripples outward, changing direction, sparking new trends, covering its tracks, until no one really knows its origin."

"Okay. So, I can use my database to find out who was the first person to eat lemon-buffalo dessert. What's so exciting about that?"

The Avatar put down the marker and turned to look at Mackey. "This war—the one that is about to happen—do you know why?" he asked.

"Everyone knows why .The frickin' Muslims are killing us.We have to kill them before they kill us," said Mackey, echoing the popular notion of the Christian Alliance.

"Why are they killing you?" asked the Avatar.

"Because they're jealous of our freedom. We have so much and they have squat. I'd be pissed too if I were them."

"Since when do people kill out of envy?" asked the Avatar. "Is this something new?"

"I admit I can't think of any good examples from history. Usually some dictator is just trying to grab more power. But I don't think the Muslims want power. I think they just want to whack us because they like it. Or it's their religion. Or they've been brainwashed or something."

"My point is that you thought you knew the answer to the most important question in the history ofhumanity—why the war will happen—but now you are not so sure."

"It's self-defense," tried Macfcey. "Their leader is crazy."

"Have you ever noticed that every leader who opposes your country is 'crazy'? Doesn't that seem like a big coincidence?"

"Yeah, I kind of wonder about that," agreed Mackey.

"And do you realize that the Muslims believe
our
leaders are crazy?"

"I guess they would."

"The collective world opinions that are pushing us toward war are an idea virus. The virus has spread and mutated over the years until no one knows how it started. No one understands the real reasons for the war," said the Avatar.

"And you
do ?"
asked Mackey, sarcastically.

"There is no reason. Society has become like a computer that's stuck in a loop. It needs to be rebooted. It needs a new program. And that is why I am here," said the Avatar.

"You want to reprogram humanity?" asked Mackey, trying to suppress a smile.

"Hiding in your database, several layers deep, is a path of influence that leads to one person. That person is, in effect, the reboot key. We need only change the opinion of that one person, and the rest will happen automatically, though no one will notice the source of the change."