Jump 255 - Multireal Part 33

37.

Natch couldn't recal the last time he had had a ful night's sleep. Sometime in October, he imagined, before he hit number one on Primo's. Before Margaret and MultiReal. He was not naive enough to think twelve hours of slumber would solve al his problems-but certainly, he thought, I expected more than this. Natch awoke feeling like nothing had changed, like he had merely transported his weariness intact half a day into the future.

He was lying on a decadently large bed, submerged in pil ows that appeared to be stuffed with real feathers. Portraits hanging on the wal against a background of royal blue chevrons spoke of a past where mustached men frolicked on horseback in fields of Kentucky bluegra.s.s. Natch stumbled over to the shower. On the way, he caught a glimpse through the window of a wide boulevard that might have been the apex of high society before the Autonomous Revolt. Now it wal owed in smashed concrete and twisted metal.

The water was clean and fresh. Once showered, Natch couldn't think of anything else to do but join the Tha.s.selians downstairs.

Brone and his devotees were waiting in the atrium. Natch was surprised to see al of the metal stalks lowered nearly to the ground, with the crescent-shaped platforms intermeshed seamlessly to form one enormous oval conference table. Where the workbenches had gotten off to, Natch wasn't sure.

"Come come come!" beckoned Brone from a chair on the far side of the room. "You almost missed breakfast." The bodhisattva's demeanor remained relentlessly upbeat, which was enough to make Natch nervous.

Natch tiptoed careful y down the stairway, expecting some kind of b.o.o.by trap or trick step al the way. He found one of a dozen empty chairs on the opposite end of the table from Brone, and slumped into it.

The bodhisattva pointed at a pretzel-shaped pastry on his plate oozing with red jam.

"These are exquisite," he offered. "Try one." Something about the room's acoustics al owed him to speak in a conversational tone and stil be heard across the table.

Natch eyed the col ection of pastries on the plate in front of him suspiciously and prodded the red one with a fork. Final y, ravenous, he pushed himself away from the table, walked a dozen paces counterclockwise, and grabbed someone else's largely untouched plate. Then he proceeded back to his seat and wolfed the pastries down one by one. The strawberry pastry was, indeed, delicious.

Brone slapped the table in mock indignation. "For process' preservation, Natch! Those poisoned pastries took me hours to prepare. I told you he was too smart to fal for this, Loget."

A few seats down, Pierre Loget t.i.ttered.

The setting was almost aggressively mundane. Ordinary people chowing down on ordinary breakfasts, holding ordinary whispered conversations about soccer, fas.h.i.+on, and politics. Natch hadn't realized Brone was even capable of such tidy domesticity.

"So I a.s.sume the room was comfortable," continued the bodhisattva, his lips hinting at a smile. Natch didn't answer. "If not, there are plenty of other vacant ones to choose from. Obviously we're missing a few amenities out here. No underground transfer system for us, I'm afraid! But we've had plenty of time to stock up on the basics. The larder's quite ful , and we've instal ed automated laundry facilities. Bil y's even outfitted the bal room with some good selections of SeeNaRee."

A few seats over from Natch, Bil y Sterno nodded, his goatee greasy with undercooked egg.

Natch brushed the crumbs off his own face and sat back. "What makes you think I'm planning on staying here?" he growled.

The bodhisattva of Creed Tha.s.sel shrugged. "You wish to leave?" he said. "No one's stopping you." He extended his synthetic hand toward the front door, which hung open a few tantalizing centimeters. "But since I did provide you with this sumptuous breakfast, perhaps you could do me the courtesy of"

"Of listening to your little business proposal," interrupted the entrepreneur, folding his arms in front of his chest. "Fine, I get it. But you might as wel save your breath. You know I can't trust you. Not after-not after what happened in Shenandoah."

"The black code again," replied Brone with a shake of his head, ever the captious professor. "Let me explain something to you, Natch. That black code is the only thing that's kept you alive this long. You think it was your cunning and ingenuity that kept the Council from finding you time and again? No, it was my code, masking and encrypting your bio/logic signatures. Erasing the breadcrumbs you leave behind on the Data Sea. It's only because of my foresight that you got out of the Tul Jabbor Complex in one piece."

The entrepreneur blanched. "You caused the infoquake?"

Brone shook his head. "No, I'm afraid I had nothing to do with that. But I figured the Council would try to take you into custody if the hearing started going the libertarians' way. So when the infoquake hit, my team was already in place, ready to get you out of there. I saved your life, Natch."

"And last month when you ambushed me in the al eyway? I suppose you think you were saving my life then too?"

"Yes," replied the bodhisattva, not missing a beat. "Don't forgetCreed Tha.s.sel has eyes and ears everywhere, including the Defense and Wel ness Council. We see what the rest of the world refuses to see." He tapped his cheekbone twice, right under the artificial eye. "Len Borda was drawing up plans to march on Andra Pradesh again, Natch. He was planning to seize MultiReal at your little demo. Fortunately for you, I came up with the idea of hiding you from the Council's prying eyes. Convincing Borda that you had disappeared and weren't going to show up to Andra Pradesh anyway. And it worked! With your apprentices running around al over the globe trying to find you, the Council had no choice but to cal the operation off.

"So we woke you up a few hours early, a.s.suming you'd immediately scurry over to the Surina compound and prepare for your demo. A demo you could now safely deliver without government interference. But what did you do instead?"

He laughed mirthlessly. "You ran off to Len Borda and offered him MultiReal yourself-so Borda could protect you from me!"

Natch folded his arms and clutched his chest in a vain effort to stop the trembling. He took a quick glimpse at the solemn faces around the table and saw that their argument had sapped al traces of levity from the room. "So why dress up in black robes and ambush me like that? What was that al about?

Loget cackled. "The black robes were camouflage," he said. "You weren't supposed to see us. Sterno here blew that strategy by firing the first shots too early."

"Told you we should have hired professionals," Bil y Sterno sulked under his breath, then stuffed his face with more egg.

"The robes were camouflage," said Brone, "but they were also a bit of necessary theatrics. You weren't supposed to see us, but the Council was. We needed to convince Borda that you'd real y been abducted."

The entrepreneur stood slowly and planted his clenched fists on the table. "You think I'm stupid enough to believe this story?" he said. "You real y think I can trust you?"

Around the table, the Tha.s.selians were throwing each other worried looks. Brone leaned forward, folding his real and faux fingertips together on the table. Suddenly Natch could see the ceaseless hatred that had been burning in his eyes since the Shortest Initiation. Nothing had changed in the past month. Indeed, nothing had changed since that day a dozen years ago when Natch had watched him writhing and b.l.o.o.d.y in the backseat of a Council hoverbird.

"You want to know how you can trust me?" said the bodhisattva in a voice kicking with strangled fury. "You can trust me because I kept you alive, Natch.

Because I arranged to pul you out of that mess at the Tul Jabbor Complex instead of leaving you to the mercy of Len Borda's truth extractors. Don't you think I want revenge? I've had opportunities. Multiple opportunities. And each time I've held back. Why? Because I need you here.

"Why plug you with black code under the cover of night? I told you, Natch. You were about to hand MultiReal over to the Council on a jeweled platter.

You had just terminated our loan agreement and indicated that you had no intention of listening to reason. Someone needed to save you from yourself. I did."

Natch straightened up and prepared to walk out the door. Surely there was no clearer definition of insanity than staying here in the den of his oldest and gravest enemy. The idle chatter around the table completely ceased. Several dozen pairs of eyes watched silently, but n.o.body made any move to restrain him.

"I repeat, Natch: if you decide to leave, I won't stop you," said Brone. He extended one hand toward the exit. "But tel me this. Where wil you go?"

Natch stopped short. He sat down.

Brone nodded, al levity bled from his demeanor. It was almost a comfort seeing him like this: brooding, unforgiving, self-absorbed to the extreme.

"Good," he said. "Now you know how I arranged to bring you here. Would you like to know why?"

Natch stood before a ma.s.sive workbench in the middle of the atrium, watching the spectacle of the MultiReal code unfolding in Minds.p.a.ce. Most of the Tha.s.selian devotees had been ordered to the hotel's upper floors as a precondition for Natch to even open up the program. Only Brone and Pierre Loget remained. They sat together on the highest of the crescent platforms, legs dangling fearlessly off the edge.

"And now you're ready to proceed?" said Brone, somewhat amused. His voice was remarkably clear considering the distance.

"Maybe," scowled Natch. "Tel me what I'm doing."

"Let's cal it a proof of concept," replied the bodhisattva. "A theory I've been working on, which Pierre here has helped me fine-tune."

"What kind of theory? What are you talking about?"

"Indulge me."

Natch grumbled and nearly threw down his bio/logic programming bars. "Okay. So let's get on with it already."

The bodhisattva nodded. "This beacon"-Natch heard the mental blip of an incoming message-"wil take you to a little subroutine Pierre and I put together. I'm sorry it's not more elegant, but without access to the MultiReal code we had to do a lot of guesswork."

The entrepreneur fol owed the beacon and cal ed up Brone's subroutine in a barren quadrant of Minds.p.a.ce. It resembled an exoskeleton of sorts, a threadbare coat into which the enormity of the MultiReal castle might slip. There were remarkably few strands to the code. It looked more like an upgrade patch than a typical subroutine. "What does it do?"

"That's what the demonstration's for," snapped Brone, irascible. "Come now. I've done what you asked. I sent al the other devotees away. Pierre and I are sitting way up here on this ridiculous platform so we can't meddle. And we'l happily sit here for the rest of the day while you examine every strand of our little add-on. But whatever you're going to do, please go ahead and do it. It's cold up here, and my Frankenstein arm is starting to freeze up."

Loget seemed to find this funny. He chuckled, then lay back on the platform and stared at the ceiling. By the rhythmic tapping of his feet, Natch got the impression he was listening to something slow and mesmerizing on the Jamm.

The entrepreneur stared at the subroutine for a good ten minutes, trying to get some inkling of what he was about to do. Final y, he withdrew a pair of bio/logic programming bars from their holsters on the side of the workbench and got started. Brone exhaled loudly in relief.

After al the scheming and maneuvering and running Natch had been doing for the past six weeks, it was a tremendous relief to final y get back to Minds.p.a.ce programming. Minds.p.a.ce was a comfortable and familiar place where he could simply slide into a groove without devoting too much of his depleted energy to it. The metal bars felt like extensions of his own arms.

It took the better part of the afternoon to attach Brone's spare scaffolding to Margaret's MultiReal fortress. Many of the connectors Brone and Loget had provided were in the right place, but there were stil a lot of adjustments to make.

Natch was puzzled to discover that most of the fibers in the scaffolding were actual y redundant, as if the Tha.s.selians had attempted to re-create functions that, unknown to them, had already been built into the original.

After completing the basic connections, Natch spent another hour focusing on security.

He knew the shapes of most of the common code leeching and diluting routines; the scaffolding didn't contain any of them. But after al Natch had been through, he wasn't about to leave anything to chance. He doublechecked. He triple-checked.

The Tha.s.selians took Natch's paranoia with surprisingly good humor. At one point, Natch overheard them discussing favorite novels, with Loget choosing Bandelo's Mystical Requiem and Brone favoring Melvil e's prehistoric Moby-d.i.c.k. They each dozed for part of the afternoon as wel . How the rest of Brone's flunkies were occupying their time upstairs, Natch couldn't imagine.

"Al right," he said final y in a stentorian voice to get their attention. "I'm done."

Brone slowly found his feet and brushed himself off, while Loget cut his connection to the Jamm. The bodhisattva made a hand gesture, causing the crescent platform to lower itself until it was only about two meters off the ground. Then he burrowed his good hand into his pants pocket, fumbled around for a moment, and final y emerged with a handful of gleaming metal disks. Coins. You could find them by the shovelful in just about any col ectors' market on Earth.

Brone pinched a coin between his fingers and held it aloft. "Okay, Natch," he said. "I want you to activate MultiReal."

Natch did so on tenterhooks, waiting for some malicious side effect to rush over him. He felt only the normal insanity, the normal electric charge of a mind on MultiReal. His exhaustion was quickly forgotten.

Pierre Loget peered over Brone's shoulder in keen expectation.

"Now catch this," said Brone. He threw the coin across the room.

Flash.

The MultiReal engine, throbbing, whirling, a.n.a.lyzing trajectories, computing atmospheric conditions, preparing eventualities. Natch, watching the possibilities unfurl on an infinite grid, zipping through would-be's and could-be's while the coin hung suspended in midair, a tiny moon for a dwarf planet.

Narrowing-sorting-selectingFlash.

Natch launched himself across the atrium, fol owing the track that MultiReal had laid out in his mind. He stretched his hand out and grasped the smal circlet easily. The coin had the faint image of a squat and many-pil ared building on one side, while the other side had been buffed smooth by the ages.

Pierre Loget clapped the bodhisattva of Creed Tha.s.sel on the back. His face bore a mighty grin, as did Brone's. "I don't get it," said Natch, stuffing the coin in his pocket. "Nothing's changed. That's how it always works."

Brone nodded. "Precisely. Which is good, Natch. That means our little add-on hasn't affected the program's basic functionality."

"So-"

"So when does it get interesting?" said Brone. He held up two coins this time, one in each hand, and deposited the rest back in his pocket. "Right about now, I'd say. This time, I want you to activate MultiReal-and catch both coins for me."

Natch scratched his head. "But-"

"Do it!" cried Loget, stomping the platform for dramatic effect. Just at that instant, Brone tossed the coins in opposite directions.

Flash.

Even frozen in the midst of a choice cycle with time moving at a glacial pace, Natch could see that there was no possible way he could accomplish such a task. The coins were headed for opposite sides of the room. Catching either one of the coins was doable, but even a great athlete with months to practice would find catching both outside the realm of possibility. Doubly so for someone of Natch's average physique.

Why, then, was MultiReal not generating an empty set? Why was it, in fact, churning out possibilities by the thousands?

ChoosingFlash.

Natch leapt in the air toward the left side of the atrium. He made an acrobatic hop over a chair that someone had left standing in his path, reached, snagged the coin, and landed graceful y on both feet.

ChoosingFlash.

Natch leapt in the air toward the right side of the atrium. He built up a head of steam, slipped agilely past the workbench and the satchel of programming bars, then caught the coin a split second before it hit the ground.

Flash.

A haze of vertigo swept through the entrepreneur as he stopped, caught his balance, and realized that somehow he had achieved the impossible. He was standing in two places at once. He had run to the left; he had run to the right. He had caught both coins, and both objects sat squarely in the palms of his hands. The fabric of the universe felt like it might rip open at any moment, unleas.h.i.+ng rabid Demons of the Aether. The world wobbled, tilted, col apsed.

Flash.

Natch heard the clink-clink-clink of a coin striking marble. He shook his head violently, then looked up and realized he had only caught one of the two objects after al . It took him a few seconds to figure out that he had, in fact, executed the second choice, and was now standing on the right side of the atrium clutching a wel -weathered euro. Natch wondered if he had failed at his task until he heard the sound of Brone and Loget's exultant laughter. The two were clapping each other on the back, leaping up and down in triumph.

"Welcome," said Brone, "to Possibilities 2.0."

38.

The stalk carrying Brone and Pierre Loget's platform slid languidly down to the ground, giving Natch time to apply additional protections on the Minds.p.a.ce bubble and shut it off. But Brone had no designs on stealing Natch's hard-fought code, at least for the moment. Instead he stood patiently beside the platform, eyes averted, and waited for the entrepreneur to finish his prophylactic measures. Loget, meanwhile, crept silently up the stairs without a word.

"Come," said Brone when the entrepreneur had dropped his bio/logic programming bars on the workbench. "Let's explore the city and find some coffee."

Natch nodded, stil shaken by the bizarre MultiReal experience he had just been a party to.

He could use some fresh air in his lungs, even if it was speckled with the debris of ancient conflict. The two strode out the door.

Chicago in twilight was a surreal vision. Natch had wandered through a few works of old-world SeeNaRee before, but they had al failed to capture the profound emptiness of a fossilized city. Kilometer upon kilometer of shattered concrete and rusty metal. Congealed blobs of melted rubber serving as boundaries for makes.h.i.+ft roads. The ghosted carca.s.ses of office buildings standing mute sentry, some toppled. Books, machine entrails, fused gla.s.s.

And through it al , no sound but the distant susurration of the wind. There was no sign of life that Natch could see; and yet, he couldn't help but feel like they were being watched.

"Let me ask you a question," said Brone, startling Natch out of his reverie. The bodhisattva was pacing slowly down the street with hands clasped behind him. "Why MultiReal?"

Natch snorted. "What kind of question is that?"