by Sean Platt
“This is insane.”
“Oh, come on, Micah. She’s just looking out for you. Making sure you get the gold star you deserve.”
Micah sat on the edge of his desk. Kai saw it as the moment of weakness it clearly was, but it seemed necessary. Micah would either sit or fall.
“This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“She was either lying to me about all of this, or she honestly didn’t know that Rachel would see it coming.”
“Who?”
He just shook his head.
So he was reporting to someone higher up. Someone at Rachel’s level, higher than even the fabled Beau Monde. Someone who’d fed him information. Someone who’d made promises that even Micah Ryan had been naive enough to believe.
Kai thought of puppets. Of Micah pulling Nicolai’s strings, unseen, all those years.
Who had been pulling Micah’s? And was that person an ally, as Micah had apparently thought…or an enemy who turned out to be in bed with Rachel for reasons unknown?
Kai’s jaw offset, and she touched tooth to tooth — her private posture of thinking.
Whoever held Kai’s ticket into the upper echelon, it had to be a woman.
April 3, 2078 —District Zero
It was after hours at the O Club, but the entertainment was still in place for the visiting VIP. Micah could hardly pay attention. Alexa would likely be back any minute, but in the meantime he was probably supposed to sit here at the table in the dim room, sipping his scotch.
But across from him, two people were having sex in a glass-fronted booth.
Above, in what at first seemed to be skylights, two nude women writhed on glass, their asses pressed flat.
Alexa returned. She slid into the booth across from Micah, blessedly blocking the view just as the man in the booth turned the woman around to try a new angle.
“Sorry about that,” she said.
“No problem.”
“One of our high rollers had a special request.”
“And you had to fulfill it personally?”
Alexa smiled. She knew better than to take the remark personally. Alexa Mathis’s name was synonymous with selling sex — from the digital page, in film, in clubs, and intimately, in person. But she’d never been so much as a glass table girl and never would be. Micah didn’t know all that Alexa had done to manipulate the sexual culture that coincidentally made O thrive today, but he’d heard rumors. The unofficial line was that while Alexa had done plenty (under various socially conscious aliases) to destigmatize the words “whore” and “slut,” she’d never come close to being one herself. Even Clive, who the high-level rumor mill implied had once had an affair with Alexa, was mum on the topic. She was business, through and through.
“High rollers have a correspondingly high sense of entitlement. Mostly, I just had to stand there while he explained why he wasn’t happy about one of our girls.”
“Why?”
“She bit him.”
“Hmm. And this wasn’t something he wanted.”
“Apparently not. But that’s what she said: that it was something he’s secretly into. I talked to her too, away from him. She said he wanted it but didn’t want to admit it. Hence the complaining.”
Alexa shifted. He caught a glimpse of bouncing breasts against glass behind her.
“How do you do this, Alexa?”
“Do what?”
“All the mind games.”
“And you don’t play mind games? Come on. If you didn’t know this already — if you don’t know it intimately from politics and if it’s not in your blood, thanks to Rachel — I’m sure working with Kai has taught you: everything is — ”
“‘Everything is about sex,’” Micah recited. “I know. I beat Kai to that little truism when I hired her. But people don’t know it or won’t admit it, and it makes them stupid. Like your client. He doesn’t even know himself, if he wants it rough and won’t admit it.”
Alexa shrugged as if this were no big deal. “It’s just a different paradigm. An evolution of what we’ve always done. Chloe changed everything. Half of the intuitive programming and conditioning we do today — not to mention a lot of the AI that’s pollinated the wider Beam — relies on new algorithms that more accurately determine deep desires against surface wants. But applying that knowledge isn’t straightforward, and all the algorithms in the world can’t replace art. The girls are still the limiters. Some have a gift for knowing when to act on buried cravings and when to let them stay buried. Others — like this one, the biter — don’t. We’re able to replicate Chloe’s deduction, but not her intuition.” Alexa took a swig of water and said, “Kai knows the difference.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“You’ve never partaken? Not once?”
Micah gave a little shrug. “I’m not interested.”
“Repressed? Or secretly gay?”
“Maybe I’m not as much of an out-of-control animal as most of your spa clients. Maybe I’ve done a better job of channeling my ‘everything is about sex’ into other pursuits.”
“Like lifting weights. Hitting things. Growling.” Alexa smiled.
“Like business.”
Alexa bit her cheek as if choking off a small smile. She turned and took ten long seconds to watch the couple in the glass booth. Micah watched them finish then begin again. The wonders of modern nanotechnology, turning sex workers into perpetual motion machines.
“So you’re not affected by the decorations?”
“I’m just here because you wanted to meet on your home turf.”
“Hmm. So if I were to do a quick tumescence scan using this table’s sensors…” Alexa trailed off, smiling, still halfway turned.
“What did you want, Alexa?” Micah asked, making his face more impatient than he felt.
Alexa cocked her head as if giving up then shifted so she was again blocking the booth’s performers. She exhaled, sipped, and said, “How is Kai doing for you, Micah?”
“She’s doing fine.”
“For your professional jobs, of course.”
“That’s what I hired her for.”
“Killing your enemies,” Alexa said.
Micah resisted the urge to look around the room. There was nobody in the closed club, and the entertainers were in soundproof enclosures, the Beam glass fronts programmed to make lip reading somehow impossible. She was trying to get a reaction out of him, but Alexa had done her own share of dirty dealing. If Alexa hadn’t commissioned murders, people around her must have. She was in his mother’s circles, for shit’s sake, and it’s not like Dear Old Mother had ever flinched at dirty hands. He’d hired Kai for killing. He wouldn’t sit here and pretend he hadn’t.
“That’s right.”
“And you’ve found her worth the pay?”
“Have you found it worth her being gone from here?” Micah countered. “Kai implied she was a great earner.”
“One of our best. Not just for us. For herself, too.”
“I’m not arguing for fair trade practices. I’m just asking.”
“Curious about the talents of Miss Dreyfus?” Alexa asked, her voice almost a purr.
“I told you. It’s professional.”
“Just curious then. About nothing in particular.”
“Why did you ask me to come here, Alexa?”
She gave Micah a touché look. “All right. Down to business then.”
“If you want.”
“Do you remember when we met?”
She wanted to dance and play coy. Fine. Micah, despite his bearing, wasn’t in a hurry.
“It was before you died,” Micah said.
“Officially, I never died. Officially, I’m a recluse.”
“But everyone talks like you died. It’s all past tense. Have you searched the deep Beam? Do you know how many layers are in all of this technology you built your business upon?”
Alexa showed teeth at t
he corner of her smile. “I know a lot more than you give me credit for. The earliest detaching spy AI? My people wrote it so we could watch customer behavior when they used our toys and peripherals. Autonomous device agents? That was us, too. And not even O. Most of this is well before I met the other five. When it was just me, just Alexa the dumb little dirty author. Before Crossbrace and way before The Beam. So yes, I know.”
Micah took another slow sip, still feeling his ace. Alexa may have been a mover and shaker on the early Beam and Crossbrace, but Ryan Enterprises had preceded even that. Given the animosities and reasons for their partnership, he felt sure Rachel hadn’t shared with her adversary. Alexa liked to pretend that she’d sought Micah from a position of power, but in his memory, she’d come on bent knees. Whatever group she and Rachel were part of, Rachel spoke as if Alexa was its standing joke.
Micah took yet another sip, working the silence between them. She was his superior in every conceivable way, but she’d come to him with a need. She’d given him Kai as a gesture, but also because of that need — and Kai herself, he sometimes thought, was involved in all of this obliquely if not directly. Alexa was big, yes. But to Micah, she was also transparent.
There didn’t need to be any animosity between them. Micah didn’t want any. But Alexa needed to know her place.
“Yes,” he said, answering her earlier question. “I remember when we met.”
“Do you remember our first discussion? The first real one, once we were sure we wouldn’t be overheard?”
Micah remembered it plenty. He’d even taken an illicit video recording using his then-beta Xenia ocular implant, in case he needed it for leverage later. But Alexa had been knocked down enough already, and he respected her. Business admired business, and Alexa had schemed her way to an empire. Everyone knew O was her company. She led. The others in the Six blustered and ultimately rubber-stamped whatever Alexa wanted. It was impressive.
“We agreed on a course of mutual benefit.”
“And?”
Micah resisted an urge to roll his eyes. She wanted him to say it so she could wash her hands before getting to business. Again: fine. He could bend.
“You said you were being stonewalled by my mother. Not coincidentally, so was I.”
Alexa nodded, apparently still waiting.
“You wanted to undermine her,” Micah went on. “And I wanted to move up.”
“You wanted to kill her,” Alexa said.
“I wasn’t the only one.”
“I never said that.”
“Officially, I guess you couldn’t,” Micah said. “What is it you’re part of with her, Alexa? Some sort of a cult?”
“Nothing I can talk about. But something that does demand certain…rules.”
“Rules that are enforceable in ways you can’t easily get around,” Micah said, voicing something he’d been mulling for many months. Because that had bothered him a bit: the way Alexa had let Kai leave O and go to Micah. He’d got to know Kai well and could tell what an asset she must have been for Alexa. She wouldn’t have let Kai go if she didn’t need Micah more than she was willing to admit. Somehow, Alexa’s hands were bound. She’d called this meeting, but Micah hadn’t hesitated to accept.
“Maybe,” Alexa said.
“So even though you want her dead,” Micah said, keeping his voice neutral, “you can’t just have her killed. Because someone would know.”
“Not quite.”
But: Yes, quite. That was exactly what was happening here. They were in some sort of a cabal, and Alexa couldn’t move against Rachel. Maybe Rachel couldn’t move against Alexa, either. They were at detente, locked into some sort of loathing, reluctant mutual respect. Micah was meant to be the tiebreaker, if Alexa could find a way.
“Okay. So why am I here?” Micah said.
“I wanted to check up on Kai.”
“You could have done that with a call. Or, ideally, asked Kai to come here tonight, too.”
“I meant, I wanted to check on how Kai was doing for you.”
“Which could have been done with a call.”
Alexa nodded slowly. He sensed a truth near exposure, a set of pretenses about to be dropped. Surprising him, Alexa said, “Micah, do you believe in God?”
“The church’s god?”
“Any God.”
Micah kept the surprise from his face. “I’m reserving judgment. Why?”
“Everyone knows I’m an anthroposophist. I’ve even turned it into a branding angle. O’s immersions have grown increasingly realistic — but not just realistic; deep, too. Like, psyche-deep. I know a lot of companies — especially unofficially — have been creating better and better sense simulation with neural downtuning, but O’s immersions are different. Like I was saying about the girl who bit my client. They reach deep down and determine not just what someone wants, but what they may not even know they want.”
“And this makes you believe in God?” Micah laughed. “Maybe I really should book a session at one of your spas.”
“There are some interesting parallels between what we do and what a company like Xenia does. You’ve heard of Project Mindbender?”
“The official version?”
“Noah West’s version.”
“Sure. I’m on Xenia’s board.”
“And how is Mindbender going?”
Micah thought about holding back, but Alexa would have access to more than he did if she orbited Rachel Ryan’s upper echelon.
“Slow,” he said.
“Why?”
Philosophy, he almost answered. But he didn’t want to give Alexa more embarrassing rope to hang herself.
“Turns out, a mind isn’t as portable as we’d thought. Or as West thought.”
“Innovation at Xenia is driven some by the market, some by curiosity,” Alexa said. “At O, it’s all market need. People want to get off in new ways, so we make that happen. But the delving that algorithms like Chloe do? It’s almost scary. There’s a story here at O about an immersion gone too long, and the subject drifted off into space — not headspace; literal space. We asked her to submit to her deepest desires. She was adept, and it went deep enough that it creeped out the techs. She started thinking of the universe.”
“Hot,” Micah said. “Who was it?”
“Doesn’t matter. Point is, we’re exploring, too. Just like Xenia. And sometimes, we see things.”
Micah heard the change in Alexa’s voice. He sat forward.
“What did you ‘see’?”
“Something that puts me at odds with Rachel. Something that, the more I try and explain the need to go in one direction, she pushes in the opposite.”
“Maybe she just disagrees with you.” And she would, if you’re blathering on about sex testing leading to visions of God.
When Alexa didn’t reply, Micah said, “Explain it to me. Maybe I can reason with her.”
Alexa laughed.
“I’m serious. What is it between you?”
Alexa’s eyes met Micah’s. Despite the almost pitying feeling of superiority he’d had seconds earlier, Micah felt a chill in his blood. Maybe he’d been in charge for most of this meeting. Maybe she’d knelt before him years ago, when they’d first opened their covert discussions behind Rachel’s back. And maybe Alexa really was a superstitious fool, like everyone seemed to believe and his mother always scathingly implied. But right now, Micah could see every iota of the industry giant the woman was under the skin. She’d clawed her way to the top and hadn’t been afraid to slash and burn on her way. Seeing the real Alexa now stopped his lips.
“That’s not something you need to worry about.”
“Of course,” Micah said.
“It’s above your head. Nothing you’re permitted to worry about.”
“Sure. I didn’t mean — ”
“I’m not an idiot, Micah. And I won’t pretend you’re one, either. We both know there’s something else, above Beau Monde. Something I won’t discuss, but that you’re not foo
l enough to believe doesn’t exist. By the book, if there was a book, there isn’t supposed to be a line of succession, but of course there is. You’re with me because you want in, and I’m your insider in the meantime. I’m in this because I know that even if I get Rachel out of the way, you will become an insider. You help me, and it gets you what you want. I help you, and I gain an ally, but also maybe a new obstacle. So it’s very important that you don’t bullshit me. It’s very important that you play along, so that everyone can win.”
He’d always respected Alexa on one level, but now he reluctantly had to respect her on another. Micah nodded.
“You don’t have to believe me. You only have to trust me.”
“Okay,” he said, unsure.
“I know what I’m doing. Honest.”
Micah looked around the room. He thought of Alexa’s cult status, wacky or not. He thought of O and how she held the reins of a group that was supposed to be governed equally by six — from, if you believed the deep Beam rumors, beyond the grave.
“Okay,” he said. “I trust you.”
“He’s on Panel, isn’t he?” Micah asked.
Alexa, merely a voice in Micah’s ear as he paced his office, seemed to breathe a bit differently. Micah took it as a yes. He wasn’t even supposed to know the word “Panel,” but he’d had years to work on Alexa and learn her rhythms. He could use his add-ons to assess her if she’d still meet him in person, but she seemed to have figured out that distance was the best protection from Micah’s sharp sense of insight.
“I can’t say,” Alexa said.
But of course he was on Panel. Craig Braemon had gone to Flat 4 for currency fraud during the credit switchover and had nearly gone to prison again for Shift tampering in 2091. In both cases, he’d managed to wiggle away with what was essentially a slap on the wrist, and in both cases he’d been far more successful at his criminal endeavors than should have been possible. It didn’t matter that he’d been caught and that Shift (as far as Micah knew) hadn’t actually been affected in ’91. For men like Craig Braemon, there were always below-the-surface benefits that must have been quite successful indeed.