Infoquake (5 page)

Jara's mind buzzed with evil possibilities as she fell into the
familiar game of what's the worst that could happen. What would happen
if panic overtook the market tomorrow and people started pulling
money from their Vault accounts? What would happen if Horvil's
trepidations became reality and the Pharisees really did launch a black
code attack? Or what if-perfection postponed!-some unconnectible
lunatics figured out a way to sabotage Dr. Plugenpatch? Jara's eyes
darted to some anonymous pedestrian making his way across the cobblestones below, and suddenly he was no longer anonymous.... He
was an important businessman who would wake up tomorrow in Beijing or Melbourne or one of the orbital colonies, Allowell maybe....
He tries to grab a batch of stock reports off the Data Sea while he
drinks his morning nitro, and nothing happens.... His blood pressure
starts rising, he's supposed to close a big deal today. What the heck is
he going to do now? ... The OCHREs in his body frantically ping the
Plugenpatch medical databases for advice on how to keep his blood
pressure down, and what to do about his congenital heart condition.
... But Dr. Plugenpatch doesn't respond.... The room goes dark, the lights go out....

Get a hold of yourself! Jara thought. You're giving Natch way too much
credit. One man can't bring the whole Data Sea crashing to a halt on a whim.
The Pharisees aren't going to launch a black code attack tomorrow. What's the
worst that could happen? A few fiefcorps will lie low for the day, that's all.

She switched the window display to a peaceful Irish countryside
and tried to get back to work. The three-dimensional flowchart on the
table silently mocked her: GULLIBLE. UNTRUSTWORTHY.
UNDEPENDABLE.

"Fuck fuck fuck!" Jara cried aloud, slamming her hand against the
bare walls. She couldn't just sit back and let this happen. Natch had to
be stopped. He had to.

"I'm telling you," said Horvil, "they're talking about it all over the
gossip networks. I'm not making this up! Go check it out for yourself
if you don't believe me."

The woman pursed her lips skeptically and regarded Horvil with a
penetrating look. It was the kind of dubious stare that muckety-mucks
from the creeds had been giving him his entire life, long before he was
old enough to deserve them. Then she cast a spiteful glance at Horvil's
apartment, which the engineer had carefully arranged in a tableau of
dishevelment: half-eaten sandwiches mingling freely on the floor with
dirty clothes, pieces of broken furniture, and the occasional bio/logic
programming bar. The elderly woman sighed and turned back to
smoothing the wrinkles on her purple suede robe. The state of the robe
seemed more important to her than Horvil's dire warnings of enemy
attack.

"Creed Elan has contacts in the Defense and Wellness Council,"
she said. "We have people in the Meme Cooperative. If everyone is panicking about Pharisee black code, why haven't we heard about it?"

"Heck, I don't know. I'm not a Council officer. Who knows how a
wave of rumors like this gets started?"

"I don't care how a wave of rumors like this gets started," she mimicked
cruelly. "I'm more interested in knowig how you, of all people, end up
on the crest of it."

The woman's name was Marulana-at least, Horvil thought her
name was Marulana. These rich old crones from Creed Elan were all
interchangeable. They scrapped amongst themselves to be the first to
solicit your donation for their silly charity events, but when it came
time for you to ask a favor of them, they were nowhere to be found. All
Horvil knew for sure was that she was a bigwig in Creed Elan-one of
the handful of minor bodhisattvas that ran the organization. She was
also one of the women his Aunt Berilla frequently had over for lunch
in that gaudy calcified estate of hers on the West End.

He could have verified her name in a heartbeat on the public directory, but it didn't really matter. Horvil knew this was going to be a
short conversation anyway.

"You want to know how I heard about this?" Horvil gulped,
looking for a quick way to foist Marulana's suspicions on someone else.
"Natch told me." He gave her a conspiratorial shrug as if to say, Crazy
world. You never know when you're going to get swept up in another rumor or
scandal. But what can you do?

"Oh, Natch told you," replied the creed official with deepening suspicion. "Somehow that doesn't surprise me." Horvil had no doubt she
would recognize the name. Ever since he had signed on with the fiefcorp, Natch's name had been spreading among the Elanners like a virulent cancer. Aunt Berilla's influence, no doubt. "So you hear that a
major black code attack is imminent, and your first instinct is to contact your spiritual mentors at Creed Elan. Is that it, Horvil?"

The sarcasm in her voice was palpable, almost a third participant
in the conversation. "Listen, your holy creedfulness," said Horvil. "I
don't expect you to panic every time you hear a strange rumor. But this is me talking! You guys know me. My family's been shelling out credits
to support Creed Elan since the beginning of time." And I haven't paid
any attention to your dumb creed activities since I was a kid. I don't even pretend to understand what kind of morals and values you people teach anymore.
I'm not sure I ever did. "I'd just hate to see your fine customers-er, constituents-get sucked dry because some black code caught them
unaware."

"I'm certain our devotees will be just fine."

The engineer lost his patience. "Why do you always have to look
for ulterior motives? Do you think Creed Elan has a-a monopoly on
good intentions?"

"No," Marulana replied drily. "We simply know from experience
that the only people fiefcorpers care about are themselves." She threw
a vulture-like frown in Horvil's direction. Then her multi connection
winked out without even a goodbye.

Horvil collapsed back to the couch, frustrated, sending a stack of
grubby pillows to the floor in the process. So much for family connections,
he thought. At least he could be comforted that the state of his apartment would make it back to Aunt Berilla.

Jara stood in the atrium of the Meme Cooperative's administrative
headquarters. All the other governmental and quasi-governmental
agencies built their offices in Melbourne, under the imposing shadows
of the Prime Committee and the Defense and Wellness Council complexes. Not so the Cooperative, which chose the lonely orbital colony
of Patronell as its base of operations for no reason Jara could discern.

The building followed the same bland architectural recipe that all
bureaucratic buildings used these days. Start with a base of stretched
stone and flexible glass to provide that chic curved effect. Throw in a
clump of rice-paper walls to show solidarity with the past. Add impos sibly high ceilings. Coat every available surface with viewscreens, and
auction off the advertising space to defray construction costs. Mix in a
crowd of thousands. The result: instant nausea.

But Jara was not there to study architecture. She was there to do
the right thing. She was there to report Natch to the Meme Cooperative and stop this insanity before someone got hurt.

The very idea was absurd, and it grew more ridiculous with each
step she took. Who are you going to tell? And what are you going to tell
than?

Jara didn't know; she just knew she had to tell someone. She tamped
down that tiny voice inside suggesting she use the information as
leverage to get out of her apprenticeship contract. No, I'm not just doing
this for myself I haven't sunk to Natch's level yet. Natch's plan wasn't just
dangerous to the capitalmen who had grown fat off the fiefcorp boom,
or the degenerate fiefcorpers like Natch and her old boss Lucas Sentinel, people Jara would just as soon see destitute. The plan also made
a mockery of the Primo's rating system that had served the public for
seventy years. People trusted Primo's to uncover shoddy programsprograms that did not obey Plugenpatch specifications, programs that
could theoretically overload bio/logic systems and cause fatalities.
Primo's was not perfect by any means. Its interpreters could be petty
and inaccurate and just plain spiteful. But who else was there to turn
to, really?

If Primo's can be undermined, thought Jara, then what in the world can
you depend on?

The fiefcorp analyst wasn't sure where her feet were taking her, but
now she discovered they were heading towards a department called the
Fraudulent Fiefcorp Practices Division. She could see the office now,
just past the viewscreen hawking a program called Feminine Mystique
242.37a. Natch's fiefcorp had received its share of warnings from this
office before, and Jara had walked these halls more than once to plead
the company's case before an arbitration board. She could have filed a complaint from home, of course, but this was the only way if she
wanted to remain anonymous. Without proof that the petitioners were
real people, the office would be flooded with data agents from dishonest fiefcorps.

Judging by the long line of multi projections, there were plenty of
disgruntled consumers willing to put in the extra effort. Jara scanned
the queue and discovered a dozen people who had carefully scrubbed
their public profiles to protect their anonymity. She herself had taken
this prudent step before opening the multi connection to Patronell;
anyone who pinged the public directories with Jara's image would see
her name as Cassandra and her locality as Agamemnon's Palace. She
doubted anyone here would get the joke.

A fine dust of boredom settled on the petitioners. Every minute or
two, the line would shuffle forward. The silence of strangers, the doldrums of public spaces.

Forty minutes later, Jara reached the head of the line. An incoming
message welcomed her to the Meme Cooperative and offered a map to
guide her through the office to her designated inspector. She took a
deep breath and dove into the labyrinth of cubicles.

"Come in, come in," urged the caseworker when she finally reached
his cube. A slack-jawed fellow with Scandinavia in his eyes.

Jara walked to the stiff-backed chair opposite his desk and found
herself ankle-deep in snow. The walls of the cubicle had disappearedalong with the rest of the Meme Cooperative building-replaced by a
frozen tundra. SeeNaRee, Jara thought with distaste. She could practically hear the familiar SeeNaRee slogan she had seen on a thousand
viewscreens: If you can't go to the places you love, why not bring them to you?
At least it was good programming; her toes were already starting to
freeze.

"I am required by the charter of the Meme Cooperative to inform
you this is an anonymous conversation," began the official in a tired
voice. "To ensure your confidentiality, neither I nor any of my col leagues can see you or otherwise identify you, your gender, or any of
your distinguishing characteristics without your express permission,
except to confirm your presence on the multi network. A sealed
recording of this conversation will be stored in our archives for a period
of no less than ..." The nondescript official droned on for another
minute as he gazed myopically in the direction of his visitor's chair.

"I'm here to report a crime in my fiefcorp," said Jara when she was
finally given the chance to speak.

"The nature of the crime?"

"Inciting rumors with the intent to mislead."

The Meme Cooperative official gave her a patronizing nod. "That
may or may not be an actual crime," he said nonchalantly, drawing circles in the desk condensation with his index finger. "Do these rumors
concern a business rival?"

"Well, not exactly, they're more just-general rumors...."

"About your industry?"

"You mean, are they about bio/logics? In a roundabout way, I suppose."

With smooth strokes, the man connected two of the circles on his
desk, forming the mathematical symbol for infinity. "Do you have any
evidence of these alleged rumors that can be presented before an arbitration board?"