The Bridge Trilogy Part 53

"A what?"

"Otaku," Mitsuko said carefully in j.a.panese. The translation burped its clumsy word string again.

"Oh," Chia said, "we have those, We even use the same word."

"I think that in America they are nor the same," Mitsuko said.

"Well," Chia said, "it's a boy thing, right? The otaku guys at my last school were into, like,

plastic anime babes, military simulations, and trivia. Bigtime into trivia." She watched Mitsuko

listen to the translation.

'Yes," Mitsuko said, "but you say they go to school. Ours do not go to school. They complete their studies on-line, and that is bad, because they cheat easily. Then they are tested, later, and are caught, and fail, but they do not care, It is a social problem."

88 William Gibson "Your brother's one?"

"Yes,' Mitsuko said. "He lives in Walled City."

"In where?"

"A multi-user domain. It is his obsession. Like a drug. He has a room here. He seldom leaves it,

All his waking hours he is in Walled City. His dreams, too, I think."

Chia tried to get more of a sense of Hiromi Ogawa, before the noon meeting, but with mixed results. She was older, seventeen (as old as Zona Rosa) and had been in the club for at least fIve years. She was possibly overweight (though this had had to be conveyed in intercultural girl-code, nothing overt) and favored elaborate iconics. But overall Chia kept running up against Mitsuko's sense of her duty to her chapter, and of her own position, and of Hiromi's position.

Chia hated club politics, and she was beginning to suspect they might pose a real problem here.

Mitsuko was getting her computer out. It was one of those soft, transparent Korean units, the kind that looked like a flat bag of clear white jelly with a bunch of colored jujubes inside. Chia unzipped her bag and pulled her Sandbenders out.

'~What is that?" Mitsuko asked.

"My computer."

Mitsuko was clearly impressed. "It is by Harley-Davidson?"

"It was made by the Sandbenders," Chia said, finding her goggles and gloves. "They're a commune, down on the Oregon coast. They do these and they do software."

"It is American?"

"Sure."

"I had not known Americans made computers," Mitsuko said.

Chia worked each silver thimble over the tips of her fingers and thumbs, fastened the wrist straps.

"I'm ready for the meeting," she said.

Mirsuko giggled nervously.

89.

13. Character Recognition Yamazaki phoned just before noon. The day was dim and overcast. Laney had closed the curtains in order to avoid seeing the nanotech buildings in that light.

He was watching an NHK show about champion top-spinners. The star, he gathered, was a little girl with pigtails and a blue dress with an old-fas.h.i.+oned sailor's collar. She was slightly cross-eyed, perhaps from concentration. The tops were made of wood. Some of them were big, and looked heavy.

'h.e.l.lo, Mr. Laney," Yamazaki said. "You are feeling better now?"

Laney watched a purple-and-yellow top blur into action as the girl gave the carefully wound cord

an expert pull. The commentator held a hand mike near the top to pick up the hum it was producing, then said something in j.a.panese.

'Better than last night," Laney said.

"It is being arranged for you to access the data that surrounds .

our friend. It is a complicated process, as this data has been protected in many different ways.

There was no single strategy. The ways in which his privacy has been protected are complexly incremental."

"Does 'our friend' know about this?"

There was a pause. Laney watched the spinning top. He imagined Yamazaki blinking. "No, he does not."

"I still don't know who I'll really be working for. For him? For Blackwell?"

'Your employer is Paragon-Asia Dataflow, Melbourne. They are employing me as well."

'What about Blackwell?"

"Blackwell is employed by a privately held corporation, through which portions of our friend's income pa.s.s. In the course of our friend's career, a structure has been erected to optimize that flow, to minimize losses. That structure now const.i.tutes a corporate ent.i.ty in its own right."

"Management," Laney said. "His management's scared because it looks like he might do something crazy. Is that it?"

The purple-and-yellow top was starting to exhibit the first of the oscillations that would eventually bring it to a halt. "I am still a stranger to this business-culture, Mr. Laney. I find it difficult to a.s.sess these things."

"What did Blackwell mean, last night, about Rez wanting to marry a j.a.panese girl who isn't real?"

"Idoru," Yamazaki said.

"What?"

"'Idol-singer.' She is Rei Toei. She is a personality-construct, a congeries of software agents, the creation of information-designers. She is akin to what I believe they call a 'synthespian,' in Hollywood."

Laney closed his eyes, opened them. "Then how can he marry her?"

"I don't know," Yamazaki said. "But he has very forcefully declared this to be his intention."

"Can you tell me what it is they've hired you to do?"

"Initially, I think, they hoped I would be able to explain the idotu to them: her appeal to her audience, therefore perhaps her appeal to him. Also, I think that, like Blackwell, they remain unconvinced that this is not the result of a conspiracy of some kind. Now they want me to acquaint you with the cultural background of the situation."

"Who are they?"

02 William Gibson "I cannot be more specific now."

The top was starting to wobble. Laney saw something like terror in the girl's eyes. "You don't think there's a conspiracy?"

"I will try to answer your questions this evening. In the meantime, while it is being arranged for you to access the data, please study these

"Hey," Laney protested, as his top-spinning girl was replaced by an unfamiliar logo: a grinning cartoon bulldog with a spiked collar, up to its muscular neck in a big bowl of soup.

"Two doc.u.mentary videos on Lo/Rez," Yamazaki said. "These are on the Dog Soup label, originally a small independent based in East Taipei. They released the band's first recordings LofRez later purchased Dog Soup and used it to release less commercial material by other artists."