Virtually True (25 page)

Odessa rubs his lips. “OK, I can deal with some introspection. But what the fuck is she supposed to do? She can’t react as fast as me or you.”

“I say we follow money streams from Osaka; no, wait, make it someplace quiet, like Sendai.” True knows he’s right. Doesn’t bother for Odessa to agree. “Reiner. Don’t take the Tokyo door. Step down to Sendai. It’s safer.”

She’s gasping, the gravity-free environment, the ethereal nature of VR taxing her mind and body. Shivers and slivers of bewilderment. It’s not her world. She doesn’t know the rules.

Odessa takes her pulse. “I’m bringing her back.”

Reiner overhears. Mouths a loud
No
.

True shrugs. “Open the Sendai door. You can’t secure everything.”

She slips inside.

“Head up to Regional Banks, then Collateral, Reiner. Open the drawer.” She does. “Now slide inside. When you find Sendai property purchased with the assistance of a Tokyo-based bank, get on. You’re in for a wild ride.”

Reiner is looking pale. Even with fluid replacement, her mouth is sticky. Sweat greases her blouse, and True detects gray hairs, age lines, crow’s feet, sour breath.

True’s seen enough. “Pull her out.”

“No money then.” Reiner’s voice a croak.

“Don’t talk.” True knows if she comes out, he goes in. In that case, it’s possible; a little steroid therapy, some surgery, and Reiner’ll be as good as old.

Odessa rings his words with warning. “Start looking more perky or you’re coming out.”

Reiner forces a smile. She likes to win, no matter how small the battle. Locates a loan for a VR Sex Playground, financed by Sonwa Bank, and is about to hitch a ride on Collateral.

True shakes his head. “No, Reiner. A good journo follows the money. Get on the Transactions stream.”

Shooting to Tokyo’s outskirts, where money trails have slowed to a baby walk. Heavy traffic. People on these streams, Japanese bank managers mostly, checking up on projects. In the distance, Tokyo’s skyscrapers beckon, cracked, the quake reflected in their tumult. Thousands more skyscrapers in the data stream than in real Tokyo. Data’s already bigger than the real.

Reiner’s gasping. A temblor, then her own aftershock. She’s taken too long to go so little distance. True looks to Odessa, who shakes a warning. Seems if Reiner wants to die, that’s her biz.

A few virtual meters before Reiner, a laser slices her stream.

“Get out of there.” True’s shouting.

Odessa’s scrambling. “Get her off that stream, they’ll cut our access.”

“Reiner! Jump onto the outgoing Collateral stream.”

Just then that stream is severed. Reiner’s astronauting out of control, barreling upwards. Lasers streak across ivory backlight and the monitor washes white. Reiner slumps in her chair. True removes the headset. Ladles her to the ground, amazed to find her breathing. Odessa zips the console shut so no one can trace Reiner to them. Grabs a beer and dabs at Reiner’s lips with it.

She licks at them and her eyes juice awake. Whispers, “I’m too mean to kill. And too smart. I got a lot of gray matter.”

Odessa pours her a heady glassful. Hands it to her. “A lot less gray matter in your brain, but a lot more gray matter on your head.”

Reiner struggles to face herself in the mirror. “What the fuck? I’m old. What happened?” She pinches wrinkles on her arms, tries to expunge liver spots on her hands with spit and shine, flakes off skin. “I don’t want anyone to see me like this.”

“I don’t want to say I told you so, but I told you so I told you so I told your ass so. Lucky you got any brain left.” Odessa hands the headset to True. “Next.”

What choice is there? Reiner almost killed for this, Aslam assassinated, Rush dissolved into pigment. Time for True to confront his demons.

He takes the same trail as Reiner, but instead of idling over binary ones and zeros, he soars. Hands at his sides, he’s going like a million kilometers a minute—over data-mountains and information peaks, through and between archival skyscrapers, under mucousy clouds of energy. Feels more than sees what he’s doing. Instead of Japan, he shoots to New York.

“What’s he doing?” he hears Reiner ask Odessa.

Odessa’s response to his boss: “Shut up and learn.”

True locates a list of Sato American Subsidiaries, pulls out the dossier of a well-known trading company, and attaches himself to Petty Cash Funds. He surfs this wave all the way to Japan, into the heart of Tokyo’s most powerful keiretsu.

True feels Odessa’s approval. “Into the belly of the beast through a tiny incision. Keep it up.”

He doesn’t acknowledge, keeps skirting the wave, then squeezes into Sato’s corporate headquarters, into their financial data. He’s there in like thirty seconds. Reiner took ten minutes and didn’t make it to Tokyo. True’s consumed by Sato’s murky world of investment, he slows here. No mistakes. Odessa’s software doles out topics as pictograms. True floats by icons for Net Profit, Gross Profit, Investments, Taxes, Real Estate. Searches no further. Inside he must choose between Corporate-owned Real Estate, Outstanding Loans/Potential Collateral, Newly Acquired Assets. True jacks in, lands smack dab in a fat stream of Tokyo land transactions.

True can see by the logjam of data that Sato’s land holdings are growing at a spectacular rate. Eyes peeled for trouble, he rips the handle off Government Regulations (for reference only). Follows the money trail contribution to contribution, the real deal, accounted for by the corp itself. A quick review convinces True that Sato is behind retaining Tokyo as the capital.

Skirting Land Transactions, True’s present location, is an electric highway: money, funneled into the country from abroad, backed up out of sight. Sato’s selling assets abroad, depressing real estate markets in the U.S. and Europe, and crushing them in the Third World. Japan: the first corporate nation, Sato at the helm. Major shit, True thinks. He’d better get out.

A sign blinking
logjam
captures his attention. So much money flows into Japan Sato can’t process it. A two-day wait for processing. He looks at the sign, blinking lonely; out of his eye’s corner, notices unprocessed money being leaked to the Luzonia Effort. Here he sees insurgents flailing, killing each other. Their expressions: terror, confusion, what the? Weapons testing. A TV screen, a news conference. The Sato corp announcing the purchase of a number of R & D companies, none True recognizes. He’ll analyze it later with Odessa’s tape of this.

On his way out, he stops at the logjam. A name from his past, before he lost himself in worlds like this. Waits for it to become clear. It doesn’t.

Odessa’s impatience cuts through True’s meta-world. “Why you just standing there?”

True starts the climb back to Odessa’s apartment. He’s feeling comfortable now, almost doesn’t want to leave, but isn’t tempted to tempt fate after what happened to Reiner.

Suddenly, there’s Eden. Does a double-blur. Yup, it’s her, drinking True in with fierce eyes.

What are you doing here?
True thinks.

“I’m here because you want me here.”

Odessa’s voice, a galaxy away. “It’s your mind, True. Get the babe outta your mind, man. There’s an interactive defense mechanism in there. Twisting your thoughts. Get out!”

“Are you going to listen to him, or to me, your heart?” She takes his hand, places it to her heart, pulsing hard. A long rush. She takes his hand, holds it to his temple. A tremendous jolt. “Hold that for me, would you, dear?” Manufactured dyke laughter. Deafening, all inside his head. He rubs his temple; something hard and metallic is lodged inside. Watches while Eden floats to clouds and stops to wave with her new girlfriend. True speeds out of Sato’s world, into Tokyo’s investment streams, then out of Tokyo. Nuzzles inside a love text, hiding behind sticky declarations of love.

Before he can take the last ramp, Odessa yanks him out.

Odessa’s hand on Reiner’s limp wrist. “She’s dead.”

Evil reality crashing down on top of him. Reiner’s lifeless in her chair, mouth and eyes open in surprise. True searches for a pulse, for a puff of air. Gives up and shuts her eyes. Reiner looks ancient now, her body relieved not to have to stem the tide of time. Even in death, she ages years in minutes.

Odessa’s studying the foreign object in True’s head. It’s hardly noticeable—almost could be a zit or some other skin malfunction. “She was saying something about not trusting the chick in there, when she just upped and died.” Odessa taps True’s temple. “How the fuck did that get in there? This ain’t no fastfood restaurant where you get it to go. This is virtual reality.”

True rubs it. Can’t explain it.

CHAPTER 18

“Pay me. The job’s done, and I’m allergic to death.”

True ignores Odessa’s demands, as he largely ignored them for the frantic hour it took to get to Hatanaka’s condo. Odessa’s pacing the tatami. True wonders how many times he’ll have to go back and forth before kernels of rice flake off.

“Give me my bread. You, Reiner owe me.”

“When the job’s complete, like Reiner said.”

“Nothing more complete than when your employer croaks.”

“I need you. The key, obviously, is this chip in my head. You’re the only one I know who can access it. The guy we’re going to see knows more about Sato than anybody. He’ll be able to fill us in. After you access the chip, you get paid. Otherwise, Reiner will have died for nothing, and there’s nothing worse than dying for no reason.”

Odessa kicks at the tatami. “I don’t get paid, I can’t get out of here. I can’t just jack into some bank’s assets. I’m history in cyberspace. Everybody’s looking for me.”

“That explains the two-person hookup and why you didn’t head in yourself.”

Odessa points. “That’s right, cowboy.”

All those caveats Reiner brushed aside were for naught. Even then, they never expected Reiner would die. Now that she had, they were both beginning to question their own invincibility.

Hot’s voice filters into the room. “Come in, True, and bring your associate. You’ll find me next to my bedroom, outside collecting sun.”

“Reiner’s dead,” True says to Hot, who’s in his garden among glorious scents and colors, a panting breeze.

Hot nods. “I know.”

True’s eyebrows arch. “Oh?”

A thousand year-old sigh. “You are here, you have brought someone else, and Reiner is not. The only conclusion I could arrive at was that Reiner was incapacitated. She is not a woman easily incapacitated. If you are here and she is not, she must be dead.”

In his chair, Hot is not regal. Tiny and frail, his pajamas hanging to the floor. He groans upright and walks stiffly to a mini-shrine, pulls a twined rope, claps his hands as he bends his neck in prayer, throws a coin into a bowl.

“What the fuck is he doing?” Odessa asks.

“I am praying for Reiner.” Hot finishes, breathing heavily from the exertion, then sits back down. “You may pray as well.”

Odessa shifts the weight on his feet. “If we’re going to pray, let’s pray for our own asses.”

The garden is lush and beautiful, much grander than Reiner’s backyard plot. Many trees; only one, a tall, thick-trunk oak, suffered any quake aches.

Hot says, “I assume you believe I will be able to tell you why Reiner is dead?”

“We know why. It was her first time in the net, and she got smoked looking for info on Sato.”

“Sato. And what is it you wish to know about Sato you couldn’t learn in the information void?”

“I know Sato’s the one buying the land. And I’m pretty sure he’s the one who masterminded the capital remaining here, and all because he wants to set himself up as some corporate king.”