The Unincorporated Man (55 page)

Hektor wasn’t able to completely stop the Liberty Party and its attacks on the corporate system, but he
was sure
that he’d slowed its growth considerably. In fact, in one way Hektor and Sean were remarkably alike. They, far better than their followers, knew the ramifications of their actions and the stakes for which they played. Most everyone else in society knew something was happening but would’ve been hard-pressed to explain what it was or where it was going. If Hektor did have one great failure to date it was in his inability to rein in, or arrange for the capture of, Mr. Doogle, the madman he’d unleashed with Elizabeth’s “accidental” death. Apart from the great lengths GCI had gone to to ensure success, the only time the government had come close, Doogle had managed to slip away.

The reason was simple. Sean Doogle had removed his locator chip and placed it on one of his minions. The minion kept the government on the false hunt long enough for Sean to change his appearance and identity. Once the government had tracked down Sean’s operative, they had him arrested, booked, and audited. The government had been under so much pressure since the assassination that they announced “Sean’s” arrest immediately. It was only later that they realized they’d arrested and psyche-audited the wrong man. To make matters worse, Sean released a scathing broadside blaming the system for being stupid enough to psyche-audit the wrong person unjustly, and told the masses that if the government could psyche-audit an innocent man, then what was to stop them from psyche-auditing anyone “anytime they felt like it”? Even though the broadside was outrageously unfair, it was effective.

Hektor observed the government’s fiasco and wasn’t surprised that they’d been duped so easily. But in all the weeks since the “first” Sean had been found, all the forces Hektor had marshaled had not been able to catch the real one. Sean was very well financed, and had the support of some very smart people… people who understood information systems as well as Hektor’s own. But The Chairman had confidence in Hektor, and so Hektor had confidence in himself. And the DepDir of Special Ops would never forget the real threat. He
always
kept tabs on the real threat. Justin Cord
had
to incorporate—for the good of GCI, for the good of humanity, which to Hektor were the same thing, and even for the good of Justin Cord.

The Supreme Court of the Terran Confederation has exercised its rarely used right of Original Jurisdiction to pull the case of
Justin Cord vs. the Terran Federation
out of the New York District Court. This move is completely out of character for the Supreme Court, which almost never hears actual trials, usually acting as a court of final appeal. Justice Chiang Lee, speaking for the five justices, stated that it would be irresponsible to let a case with such important issues and such a large impact on society go through the lower courts. “Both parties have the resources to appeal to the Supreme Court anyway, and undoubtedly would, so why waste everybody’s time?” said Justice Lee. This is believed to be quite a blow to Justin Cord and a major victory for the government. Hektor Sambianco is also to be congratulated, as it is believed to have been his amicus curiae [friend of the court] brief that convinced the two justices needed to invoke Original Jurisdiction in the first place. Manny Black, Justin Cord’s lawyer and now a recognized legal genius, could have kept Justin Cord unincorporated for years if not decades with appeals, delays, motions, and other legal maneuvers. All of this becomes superfluous, as there will now only be one trial.

—
NEURO COURT NEWS

The whole system waited. It was as if the upcoming trial was part major sporting event and part serious drama. Neela explained to Justin that there had never been anything like this in the federation’s history. There were perhaps a total of five hundred people out of a system of billions who could have explained all the interweaving threads of sociology, economics, politics, culture, and even mysticism that had combined to bring this brewing crisis to a boil. But everyone understood at an instinctual level, if nothing else, that Justin Cord was at the center of it. Everyone understood that the trial’s outcome would affect them personally in the days and years to come. They knew this, and watched.

Whether it was Hektor’s propaganda or Sean’s regrouping of his forces, the escalating level of violence slowed down. The acts of terror, the massive rallies—pro- and anti-incorporation—the considerable barrage of information on the Neuro all faded into a background haze as the trial got under way. Even normal economic activity slowed down as people canceled trips and businesses canceled events to be near family and friends during the trial. Humanity ground to a halt waiting for the outcome.

Court Cards! Buy your special edition of Court Cards! In a fifty-four-card deck you’ll get a holo and bio of each person involved in this most important event of our lifetime! Impress your friends and family with your knowledge. Every card comes embedded with a special data chip chockful of information downloadable to your DijAssist. Buy now and I’ll give you the first five cards of the deck absolutely free! That’s right, I’ll give you the Supreme Court of the Terran Confederation. If you’re not absolutely pleased with your deck of fifty-four you can keep the Supremes as my gift!

—OVERHEARD IN THE PLAZA OF THE SUPREME COURT BUILDING DURING THE

GOVERNMENT VERSUS CORD
TRIAL

Sebastian had calculated that Justin would not call on him for at least another three hours. It wouldn’t have mattered if he did, as the council meeting would take place in a Neuro Junction on the Eurasian continent, and Sebastian could instantly “get back.” And even if he couldn’t, the mime program could “do” Sebastian well enough for a short time. Avatars had long ago discovered that mime programs could be quite useful human helpers when there was a need for an avatar’s presence somewhere else in the Neuro. But Sebastian didn’t want to take the chance with Justin. This human, reasoned Sebastian, was smarter, more dangerous, and not conditioned to life with avatars. And that meant he might notice things that other humans wouldn’t. The truth was that he already had, which was one of the main reasons why this meeting was taking place.

Although he could have instantly appeared at the door of the council meeting, Sebastian liked the feeling of walking. And so he took the form he most often used when he was on his own in the Neuro—a middle-aged man in fit condition with brownish graying hair, bedecked in a full-length toga and sandals. He found himself strolling along a path that could have been a painted scene of a Tuscan countryside. On the way over he was delighted to be made aware of the presence of another avatar he’d been spending more and more time with.

“Hello, Evelyn. Don’t tell me they’ve summoned you as well.”

“Of course they did, you old goat,” she chided. “And it’s all your charge’s fault. I’m worried sick about my poor Neela. She’s in love, love!” she exclaimed. “What sort of life can they have? Poor fools.”

Sebastian smiled. Evelyn, he mused, did always tend to mother her charges, more so than other avatars. It was hard not to. Humans were so, well, human, and therefore in need of great and constant care. And, he noted, as the avatars quietly evolved, so, too, did their own emotions. He wasn’t exactly sure when his race had made the leap into actual sentience, but he knew in the depths of his code that the emergence of emotions within the species had sealed the deal.

“Walk with me, my dear?” asked Sebastian. “It will do you good.”

Evelyn appeared at his side. She was dressed in matching toga and sandals—a courtesy for an old friend’s eccentricity.

Sebastian was clearly delighted. His warm, craggy smile revealed a too dazzling set of alabaster teeth. “How goes your poetry?”

And so with small talk they walked among the simulated Tuscan hills until they came to an imposing tan stone building with clean-hewed lines. There was a single door, vertically slatted, with six two-by-four planks of wood and small rounded and exposed circular iron rivets lining and centered within each plank. Posted on the door in Latin were the words “
concilium cella
,” or “council room.” When they opened the door they were greeted by an interior that appeared to be an exact replica of a pre-GC United States Senate committee hearing room. There were council members seated on a raised dais at a large U-shaped table, which itself was covered in a reddish felt material. Curtain skirts hung from the front, and microphones stood before each council member. In front of and centered almost but not quite within the U-shaped larger table was a smaller single table covered in a green felt, and also having two small microphones. The council members were all dressed like pre-GC senators, and because this was the council’s domain and they chose the settings, Sebastian and Evelyn found themselves dressed in matching attire. They were both beckoned to take a seat at the smaller table, which they promptly did.

As was the custom, the leader of the council was the avatar who’d sat on the council the longest. However, the only power given her was the right to speak first and sit in the center. Sebastian was well familiar with the protocol, as he himself had sat on the council in the past. But at some point he’d wanted to be reentwined—the term given to the bonding of a human and avatar—and so he’d resigned. The rule was and had always been that only unentwined avatars could sit on the council. Besides, decided Sebastian all those terabytes ago, sitting on the council had been a very boring job, as almost nothing ever happened in the human or avatar world that needed serious intervention. Things had, however, changed.

Bet they’re earning their credits now
, thought Sebastian.

“The council is now in session,” intoned a member by the name of Lloyd. “Called to council are the avatars Sebastian and Evelyn entwined with the humans Justin Cord and Neela Harper. They are to give witness and advice to council. Are the witnesses conversant with the issues currently facing the council?”

Sebastian stood up and smiled. “If the council would be so kind as to state them again. My programs have not been debugged for a while, and I fear I may be coming down with a virus.”

All of which was untrue. Sebastian could have easily downloaded the information from a secure Neuro depot in an instant. But he liked to hear information in a sequential order, if possible. The sequence it was presented in would often be as informative as the information itself.

The leader of the council smiled, knowing exactly what Sebastian was up to, but decided to let him have his way. “The issue facing the council is this,” she offered. “There is an increasing probability that the nature of our existence will be discovered by the humans. So far the chances are still 1,345,456,003 to 1, but they are spiking in an unpredictable manner.”

A council member whose choice of physical appearance looked very much like that of the gangster Al Capone spoke up. “Unpredictable? It’s not unpredictable. Gate’s balls, woman, it’s Cord!” Then, looking over to Sebastian accusingly: “Weren’t you supposed to control this human?”

“Justin is difficult to control and very hard to predict,” answered Sebastian, unmoved by the outburst.

The council leader spoke next. “What makes him especially difficult, Sebastian? You’ve been entwined with three other humans. You cherished, learned from, and taught them all quite well. You are one of our most experienced and respected intellects—hence our choice of you for this entwining.”

“Sebastian,” added Capone, “we’ve kept our secret for centuries… from tens of billions of humans. Could Justin Cord really expose us? Could this immeasurably important symbiosis come to an end?”

“It will not all come to an end,” answered Sebastian, “but we do have to be extremely careful. As this council is well aware, we’ve managed to remain undetected because of two factors. One, we guide humans from their earliest cognitions to ‘not’ think of us as anything other than clever programs to be mostly ignored by the time they reach adulthood. This is, of course, to our mutual benefit. It has been proven that our two cultures can thrive simultaneously as long as humanity remains unaware of our existence. Those who do suspect us are mostly loners or DeGens. And, of course, we remove the compulsion to think about us when these small groups, by our influence over persons of power, are inevitably subjected to psyche audits.”

“But Justin suspects,” said an elderly male avatar who’d taken on the appearance of Albert Einstein. “He may not realize he suspects, but he suspects.”

“Honored sir,” answered Sebastian, this time leaning into the microphone, “the problem is not that he may suspect. Many in the past have suspected that avatars are more than they let on. Remember science-fiction writer Tali Dyonna Klein from six decades back?” The council and Evelyn shared a shudder at the memory of that particular author and her sometimes very accurate hypotheses. “But even she, in the end, decided her stories were just that—the musings of a creative mind. Her conditioning held.”

“But Justin has no conditioning,” said Al.

“You are, of course, correct,” answered Sebastian. “But for the fact that he’s been recently quite distracted,” he shot Evelyn a quick and knowing look, “he could easily stumble onto the truth and, unlike Ms. Klein, he’d be inclined to believe the hypothesis due to a lack of the requisite conditioning. If anything, the culture he left behind would perhaps make him more inclined to believe that computers could achieve some measure of control over an unsuspecting world.”

“Sebastian,” said the council leader, “you know very well we don’t have this control you refer to.”

“Of course not, ma’am. But we do intervene; either to keep the humans from discovering our existence or to proactively help them with their scientific and cultural endeavors. I would also encourage you to look at Justin’s world through his time’s eyes—
Colossus, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix, Ghost in the Machine, Terminator
—to name but a few of the movies he’s been acculturated with. He is programmed to see our world as a threat. In fact, he once came right out and asked me about avatars sharing information with one another. He thought it made perfect sense, and why shouldn’t he? It does. When was the last time any
adult
human asked you a question like that?”